eBay’s suite of 14 apps for mobile devices have made it the number one retailer in US mobile ecommerce. eBay expects mobile sales to account for around $1.5 billion this year; that’s around 3.3% of the US mobile sales market, and more than double the 1.5% claimed by Amazon, according to ABI Research.
Steve Yankovich, eBay’s vice president for mobile, says they are intending to release a new app every 5 weeks: he told SFGate “we pick and choose what will move the needle, and then we do it fast.” Picking the right platform also has a huge effect on the bottom line: users of the iPad typically spend three or four times more in a shopping spree than iPhone users.
Perhaps most interestingly for sellers, mobile use might be the saviour of auctions: last year when eBay released a mobile app alerting bidders on the state of auctions they were watching or bidding on, “sales shot up.” Yankovich says, “it was instant money.”
