mobile shopping

Cyber Monday becomes Cyber Week

Monday's CNET Update comes with free shipping:

With a surge in online shopping on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, why call it Cyber Monday anymore? Online sales for Internet retailers surpassed $1 billion for the first time on Black Friday. With early online deals, next year you can avoid a Walmart store battle over phones.

Also in today's roundup, we're keeping an eye on top online retailers and sales this week. Amazon is always the top destination for online deals, but shoppers are also heading to eBay and Shopify. And there's more shopping being done on mobile … Read more

eBay gives the world another Groupon

Thursday's CNET Update wants to make a deal:

eBay made headlines Wednesday with a dramatic redesign, but it's not out of the spotlight yet. Today's tech news roundup looks at eBay's Lifestyle Deals, a service similar to Groupon. It's being tested now in a few markets, including New York. Can you handle (or want) another Groupon clone? Is there room in this space for eBay? Share your daily deal experiences and thoughts with us via e-mail or in a 15-second Tout video.

This holiday, Fab expects you to flock to its mobile shopping app. The … Read more

Mobile shopping bringing in $20 billion annually -- study

Shopping on mobile devices has become a $20 billion business, according to a mobile spending study released today by Javelin Strategy and Research.

The report, based on three online surveys of mobile phone owners and a survey of mobile device owners, found that consumers spent more than $20.7 billion over the past year while shopping on mobile devices -- with $5 billion of that spent through tablets.

The firm said the popularity of shopping on tablets will double within the next three years. The larger handheld devices have bigger screens than their smartphone counterparts, making it more comfortable for … Read more

Why shop via your phone? To keep your spouse in the dark

Some people just cannot stop buying.

They wander into stores during their lunch hour, they're constantly attuned to online shopping. Who can wonder that the wise people at Amazon decided to name their online clothing store MyHabit?

And yet, as everything goes mobile, is it really quite as easy to shop through your phone, as it is on your cute little PC or iPad? Everything is a little smaller, for example. It's harder to zoom out and imagine.

However, new research has entered my laptop that offers a far more rational perspective on mobile shopping. Apparently, a substantial … Read more

E-shoppers go mobile on Thanksgiving, Black Friday

Apple's iPhone and iPad helped make mobile devices a key driver of Thanksgiving and Black Friday e-commerce this year, according to a report from IBM Coremetrics.

Online Thanksgiving shopping grew by 39.3 percent year over year, creating momentum that continued into Black Friday, where online sales grew by 24.3 percent compared with the same period last year, said the report (PDF).

And Black Friday witnessed the arrival of the mobile deal seeker, who embraced his or her mobile device as a research tool for in-store and online bargains. Mobile traffic came close to tripling year over year, … Read more

Maybe mobile wine shopping isn't such a lame idea after all

Who the heck wants to shop for wine on their mobile phone? All the pinch zooming, typing "Domaine de la Vougeraie Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru" and then having it autocorrected... ugh.

But today I have been converted. Now I think shopping for wine on your smartphone isn't such a bad idea. In fact, it will help Wine.com, an online wine retailer, close the nine percent of shoppers that log onto its website with their smartphones. Now there's a chance they'll actually make a purchase, thanks to Wine.com's just-launched and fully functional mobile website. … Read more

Amazon rings up shopping via text-message

Amazon.com unveiled on Wednesday a text-messaging shopping service, which adds a mainstream player to the mix of companies that offer shopping to-go.

Amazon TextBuyIt is designed to let mobile device users window-shop, compare prices, and purchase products from Amazon.

Shoppers send a text message to "Amazon" with the product name, search term, UPC, or ISBN code. The e-commerce giant will offer matching products, as well as prices. Buyers can purchase products by replying to the text message and punching in a single-digit number next to the desired item. Amazon will then call the person to confirm the … Read more