Ricardo Geromel – Forbes, 03/29/2012
Online traffic generated from mobiles and tablets represent only 1.5% of all web traffic in Brazil - Image by MobileMarketingWatch
Brazil already represents the largest ecommerce market in Latin America. Brazil’s online population, 78 mi, is larger than the total population of Spain, France or UK. E-commerce has been skyrocketing in Brazil, average growth of 32,5% in the last two years and expected 26% growth in 2012. However, the use of mobile phones to access the web is still in its infancy: online traffic generated from mobiles and tablets represent only 1.5% of all web traffic in the country. Today, Brazilians are still using their phones only to talk and to send texts. Tomorrow they will use their phones to surf the web and shop as well.
According to Brazil’s Telecommunication National Agency (Anatel), there are 116 cell phones for every 100 people in Brazil. However, smartphones are still underutilized in Brazil. The proportion of purchases made from mobiles phone is strikingly small, below 1% of total online sales. Following the global trend, e-commerce is expected to rise steeply in “the country of the future.” By 2015, at least half of Brazil’s population, or 100 million people, will have a mobile phone with Internet access.
Mobile shopping is already a reality in the developed world. PayPal generated $750 million in revenues from mobile in 2010. In 2011, Paypal’s mobile revenue forecasts were $1,5 bn. Later in 2011 the online payment system owned by eBay boosted forecast to $ 3 billion. Finally, eBay’s cash cow ended processing over $4 billion in payments only in 2011. For 2012, Paypal is expecting $7 billion in mobile payment volume.
Brazil Portal 