In what is the first mobile pre-load deal agreed by eBay anywhere in the world all O2 mobile smart phones sold in the UK will have the eBay app pre-installed. It’s also a first for Telefonica, the owners of O2, it’s the first time that they have selected an app to make available to its O2 smart and feature phone customers across the board.
Starting later this year the eBay mobile app icon or a link to the eBay mobile site will appear on either the home page or two subsequent pages of most Android, Windows Phone 7, Symbian, RIM and bada (Samsung operating system) devices sold by O2 in the UK over the next two years. The company will work with device manufacturers to pre-install the application.
The UK has been the fastest adopter of m-commerce, with more UK buyers shopping through the eBay app than anywhere else in Europe. At the height of the holiday shopping season in December, 10% of eBay UK’s entire sales volume was transacted through mobile.
eBay has made no secret of the importance of m-commerce to their future growth, only last week John Donahoe said that mobile, local and social are the future for eBay and indeed for the whole of e-commerce. With this deal they are firmly cementing their position as a leader in m-commerce in the UK and as Steve Yankovich, eBay VP of Mobile, said, “With smart phones now outselling PCs, the future of shopping for our customers is mobile”.
I have to admit I’m still bemused by all that’s mobile, I have the mobile app installed but rarely use it. I’ve yet to buy something purely on the mobile app and still fire up the browser on my smart phone to view the whole site. For the rest of this month I’m going to make a conscious effort to buy using eBay’s mobile app and experiment with it – has anyone got any tips for me on how to make full use of it?
2 Responses
Though I have never used a SmartPhone for either an eBay or Paypal app, I would be concerned about account security !
Imagine a txt message asking you to confirm your username/password, how do know its not a phishing spoof ?
What happens (if you can do this) create an auto login on your phone, and you lose your phone or have it stolen?
What about eBay/Paypal users like me that use the excellent Paypal Security key (which incidentaly saves you from changing your password on a regular basis, I assume you all do that ?) I don’t carry the key about with me, so would I still be able to log into eBay without it from my phone ?
So many questions 🙂
if folks are buying using mobiles,
videos, flash ,and large pictures etc need to be re considered at the moment