Due to the increasing use of smartphones and tablets worldwide, online retail continues to expand to take advantage of the growing mobile population. In 2021, smartphone retail e-commerce sales in the United States are projected to surpass 345 billion U.S. dollars, up from 148 billion U.S. dollars in 2018. However, despite these optimistic figures and projections, mobile shopper conversion rates in the United States are still lower than through other digital shopping platforms.
Digital buyers in the United States are more likely to make their mobile purchases via mobile apps than via mobile websites. In March 2019, Amazon saw 85 percent of mobile activity coming through its app. In contrast, 62 percent of mobile activity for The Home Depot was generated through its mobile website. Amazon leads the ranking of the most popular shopping apps in the United States with 150.8 million mobile users accessing the Amazon app in June 2019. Second-ranking Walmart had a monthly mobile app audience of 82.57 million users.
Although many smartphone users in the United States already have firsthand experiences with mobile transactions, attitudes towards the use of mobile payments vary from user to user. A February 2018 survey found that 26 percent of Samsung Pay users reported to strongly agree in the possibility that mobile wallets could replace physical wallets in the coming future, while in comparison only ten percent of Apple Pay users had the same opinion. Another survey conducted on the same year found that more than half of respondents were worried about their personal data when using mobile payments. However, the possibility of mobile proximity payments holds appeal for mobile users who rely on their digital devices to simplify their shopping experiences. The number of proximity mobile payment transaction users in the United States is projected to reach 74.9 million users by 2022.
