Apple Losing Ground in Mobile Payment Market
June 19, 2024
By: Michael Foster
Apple is huge, but they’re not so huge that they can afford to lose the mobile payment market, which is slated to grow to $721 billion by 2017.
The giant company has grown to dominate the smartphone market and, despite growing popularity of Android devices, remains the dominant market for app developers, mobile payments processors, and advertisers.
If anything, iOS usage is growing much faster than Android usage, and with the iBeacon and the fingerprint recognition hardware in the 5s, they have the groundwork set to dominate mobile payments and be in charge of that $721 billion market, right?
Unfortunately, reality is quite different. Despite growing market share and iOS device usage, and even with growing consumer confidence with mobile commerce, Apple is actually losing in the mobile payments battle. According to a new study, Apple lost over 15% of the mobile payment market in Q1.
IHL analyst Greg Buzek notes that this fall is unsurprising, given Apple’s phone-focus runs counter to the trend towards a larger infrastructural shift within the point-of-sale (POS) industry. “The single biggest technical trend we are seeing in retail is not mobile, but the desire from retailers to have a single business logic and code-base to work from across the various channels that they operate. They are working to merge their ecommerce, mobile commerce, catalog, mobile POS and traditional POS along with single merchandising systems to better serve customers. Mobile POS is just part of this and that is being reflected as these new devices roll out,” Buzek said.
Apple naysayers have made fools of themselves for years. Doubting Apple is a dangerous game, but perhaps not so dangerous since their recent debacles: Apple Maps, iTunes Radio, and (depending on who you ask), the $3 billion acquisition of Beats.
