TechWeekEurope Readers Don’t Trust Mobile Shopping

Mobile shopping was supposed to be a big trend in the Christmas season just gone, but TechWeekEurope readers prefer more traditional shopping methods, such as buying on the High Street and ordering online from the comforts of their home, a poll has revealed.

Only ten percent opted to use a smartphone to buy the majority of their Christmas presents, a figure that was dwarfed by those shopping in the actual shops, and by those who declared Christmas is humbug, refusing to play the consumerist game altogether.

Mobile shopping still a minority sport

We asked readers how they bought “most” of their Christmas presents, and the most popular answer (at 44 percent) was ordering online from a site like the notorious tax avoider Amazon.

The second most popular option was to get to the shops and pick the stuff out in person, which is still the preferred option for more than a quarter of our readers (26 percent).

Only one tenth of you do the bulk of your pre-Christmas shopping on a mobile device – and that figure is less than half of the number of people who say, along with the unreconstructed Ebenezer Scrooge,  that “Christmas is humbug”.

That’s bad news for mobile device manufacturers and merchants, who are doing their best to persuade users to adopt mobile shopping.  While the figures show that Britain is ahead of the curve in the use of the Internet for shopping, and nearly half of us use our mobiles to get to social media sites such as Facebook, there’s still a reluctance to buy stuff through the phone.

Is the festive season really humbug? Enjoy our Tech-y Christmas quiz!