Some good news from eBay as mobile purchases soar over Christmas

In some ways, it has not been the best of years for eBay. The entire “Skype hand-off” debacle forced the on-line auction powerhouse to agree to a humiliating sale for the most popular VoIP service in the world. But now that nasty business is behind it, eBay seems determined to start the good press rolling again. And here is a great start – eBay has reported that it’s sale of goods through the eBay mobile application has tripled since last year, with 1.5 million items being bought by mobile users.

What are the details?

eBay released a whole cluster of stats and metrics with this story, which GoMo News has sieved down to the most important few:

- a total of 20 million items were purchased on eBay this Christmas. That means that 7.5% of all eBay sales this Christmas were mobile sales.
- mobile transactions on eBay amounted to more than half a billion dollars in 2009.
- 750,000 unique visits are made to eBay every day from the mobile apps.
- it’s not just small items being bought over mobile. A $75,000 1966 Chevrolet Corvette was one of the larger mobile purchases, as well as a $19,000 boat.

Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay marketplaces said that “mobile is changing the way people shop this holiday season. With eBay on your iPhone, great deals are available anytime, anywhere. We see consumers taking advantage of that freedom to find great holiday gifts and deals without sitting at their computer or being stuck at the mall. eBay buyers and sellers have rapidly embraced mobile commerce this year, and this holiday season has been a mobile commerce tipping point. Shopping will never be the same again.”

What we think?

This is good news, but necessarily for eBay. It’s great news for the mobile industry and mobile consumerism in general, as it shows a trend of more purchasers getting on mobile. But consumers have been showing more interest in fixed-price purchasing (like that offered by Amazon) than unreliable auctioning. Over the Christmas 2008 period, for example, eBay saw a drop of over 12% in overall revenue. It has been positioning itself to be more like its fixed-price competitors – so seeing an upsurge of interest in mobile purchasing might be something it can grab on to.