2013 Australia - E-Commerce, Marketing and Advertising

The mobile and digital economy

Digital economy – e-commerce insights

In 2013 it is heartening to see that people are getting the message that broadband means more than just fast internet access. Increasingly key decision-makers in business and government are reaching an understanding of the transformation that is underway in the economy. One positive outcome of the financial crisis was that global attention turned to new infrastructure developments and this created a unique opportunity to shift the broadband emphasis from a high-speed internet service to a national infrastructure for the digital economy that will underpin a range of positive social and economic developments. These developments are also referred to as the Internet of Things and M2M, in which the digital economy will play a key role.

The digital economy affects everybody, including existing players such as telcos, banks, media and retail. They will need to adapt to the new environment, while new players will enter these markets from different angles.

This indicates a strong acknowledgement of business benefit, including productivity gains and positive growth. It highlights an almost unanimous view that active digital economy participation is important to future business success, despite a diversity of adoption, planning and sophistication across the business community.

While popular sites like Amazon and eBay are well-known, social media models such as Facebook Credits and Pinterest may offer future e-commerce opportunities. Governing bodies are also recognising the importance of this sector – the European Commission outlined five priority areas it wanted to improve in order to increase e-commerce growth and its contribution to the GDP.

This report offers industry insights and information on the e-commerce sectors. It includes selected information on the leading trends in this sector and provides examples and statistics, where available. It also surveys how well businesses are prepared for the digital economy; where they participate; their strengths and weaknesses; and the first interesting commercial starting points. It gives statistics in tabular and chart formats. The report also contains detailed statistics from e-business activity usage surveys.

The mobile and online economy

After decades of procrastination the era of m-payments has finally begun to take off, with three of the four banks now offering m-payment applications. Further expansions are expected in other sectors of m-banking, as smartphones and tablets are quickly becoming customers’ preferred way to interact with their banks. By 2015 it is expected that m-banking will overtake the online banking in the number of transactions carried out electronically.

The arrival of the iPhone proved that the mobile operators’ restrictive portal market could be bypassed and this produced an explosion in new mobile applications – to such an extent that the value of this market overtook the mobile portal market within two years. It is now the dominant m-commerce platform. Within the next year it is possible that the open Android platform, together with an open API type access, will support more m-commerce and drive the development and uptake of m-payment facilities further.

Parallel to the rollout of the national broadband network (NBN) the government also has its National Digital Economy Strategy.

Based on the trans-sector model the NBN will become the shared infrastructure for a range of sectors such as e-health, e-education, smart grids, e-government, digital economy, digital media, etc. The first release sites are playing a key role in testing this concept, while at the same time allowing organisations to obtain first-hand experience in building the digital economy.

We are convinced that convergence offers unprecedented opportunities if the NBN is linked to trans-sector innovation, creating a true digital economy. Such a parallel strategy can break through the many silo-based structures that have been created over the last 50 years. And it can break through inflexible vertically-integrated structures that increase costs and impede competition and innovation.

Such an approach will most likely result in economic and social benefits worth many billions of dollars and, as we are already seeing, it will create significant new business opportunities for Australian companies. In healthcare alone there is talk of savings worth more than $10 billion, and $2 billion in smart grid.

Across Australia more and more users are now shopping online from the comfort of home, while at work, and even impulse buying using mobile devices. While online sales have been growing at around 20%-30% annually, the overall market share is still only around 10% of the overall market. Many users cite availability, convenience, pricing and delivery options as some of reasons for purchasing online.

While the number of users purchasing online has increased by more than 40% over the last couple of years so, too, has the amount of businesses that operate a retail web presence. Low start-up costs and minimal barriers to entry have seen many enterprises, both Australian- and overseas-based, operating successfully in the direct sales to consumers market.

Online advertising expenditure in Australia continues to reach new heights, with year-on-year growth between 15% and 20%. The increased use of video advertising and also video viewing continues to grow as the increase in broadband availability has seen advertisers continuing to experiment with new formats. We are seeing an ongoing increased use of targeted advertising delivered over the internet, as millions of users watch millions of online videos monthly.