Smartphone Online Shoppers to Outstrip 50% by Year-end: Yahoo Taiwan

Some 2.38 million in Taiwan shopped online using smartphones in the first half (H1) of 2014, up 30% year on year, to account for 44.6% of the total online shoppers in Taiwan, according to Yahoo Taiwan.

A senior manager of Yahoo Taiwan's e-commerce business division said the proportional growth of online shoppers using smartphone exceeds that of the overall online-shopping market. Driven by 4G  services, large-screen cellphones, and improved mobile payment methods on the island, he added, cellphone online shopping may eclipse the 50% threshold and integrate with trendy Online-to-Offline (O2O) applications to become a major arena attracting more players.

Since 2013, the executive continued, Yahoo Taiwan has  recognized such strong growth in online shopping by mobile devices, as well as cellphone online shopping with eye-catching growth momentum, which is expected to motivate e-commerce firms to devote the most resources to develop applications, with O2O to be a major focus.

The findings of a survey by Yahoo Taiwan show the most popular three O2O applications in Taiwan are: QR Code-scanning shopping (37.1% of the surveyed cellphone online shoppers deem  as incentive to buy); discount coupon (51.6% say discount coupons incentivize using shopping apps); and location-based-service (20% to 50% look to receive store information integrated with LBS).

Yahoo Taiwan's annual e-commerce market report this year was completed in partnership with local research firm InsightXploer Ltd., based on 4,000 interviews to be credible.

Some 45.5% of respondents say they use cellphones for online shopping "at least once a month", while 24.8% say "more than once  monthly". Many used to believe that cellphone online shoppers are more impulsive to result in more modest spending than via traditional personal computers (PCs). However, Yahoo Taiwan's latest annual report shows 32.4% of the respondents say they have no preset budgets when shopping via cellphone online.

Most online shoppers are between 30 to 39 years old to account for 48.2% of the total, with 50-and-older shoppers making up about 30% to also boast higher  purchasing power.