Mobile Holiday Shopping Skyrocketing Across Europe

This year, the Adobe® Dig­i­tal Index 2013 Online Shop­ping Fore­cast hinged a bet that online sales this Thanks­giv­ing would be almost on par with Black Fri­day—sug­gest­ing that in the next five years Black Fri­day may actu­al­ly fall behind.

Much of this move­ment in the U.S. is due to the obvi­ous rise of smart­phones and tablets in dai­ly lives—meaning more Amer­i­cans are sit­ting on the couch after the big meal with their devices get­ting a head start on Black Fri­day sales.

In the UK and Europe, e‑commerce is on the rise and Christ­mas shop­pers every­where are brows­ing off the rack and onto their devices. Are you still skep­ti­cal of kick­ing off a mobile strat­e­gy? If the num­bers below don’t speak for them­selves, con­sid­er ben­e­fits such as stand­ing out from—or at least keep­ing up with—your com­pe­ti­tion, util­is­ing mobile to show­case last-minute deals, stay­ing top-of-mind for hol­i­day shop­pers on the go, and increas­ing brand expe­ri­ence via a cool mobile app to name a few. And with easy new tools such as Adobe Edge Reflow and Phone­Gap—build­ing a respon­sive Web design, engag­ing app or bet­ter expe­ri­ence across any screen is sim­pler than ever.

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Near­ly One-Quar­ter of UK Hol­i­day Sales Expect­ed to be Mobile; Aus­tria Leads Europe in Smart­phone Growth

More specif­i­cal­ly, in the UK alone, Adobe fore­casts tablet and smart­phone use this month to be up 44% and 65%, respec­tive­ly, com­pared to last Decem­ber, with a whop­ping 20% of online hol­i­day sales expect­ed to come from mobile.

Neigh­bors in the Nordics will look to shop via smart­phone 51% more this Christ­mas and 48% more via tablet, while in Aus­tria we’re expect­ing an impres­sive 126% and 133% growth in tablet and smart­phone shop­ping. In Ger­many and the Nether­lands, tablet growth is pro­ject­ed at 56% and 60% respec­tive­ly, while growth of smart­phones is expect­ed to hit 87% and 92%, respec­tive­ly, this Decem­ber. Final­ly in France, smart­phone usage may be up 98% this Christ­mas while tablet shop­ping should rise by 82%.

In most coun­tries, tablet growth isn’t quite yet as promi­nent as the rag­ing use of smart­phones to close on hol­i­day sales, but we expect this trend too will change as mobile devices con­tin­ue to impact our lives.

So don’t pick out that new smart­phone just yet for Christmas—your old one is still good for something.

About Mark Phibbs

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Mark Phibbs (@MarkPhibbs ) is Vice Pres­i­dent of Adobe Sys­tems for Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa (EMEA) Marketing.