Wholesale News & Articles

With the release of Amazon's new color tablet, Kindle Fire, the ecommerce giant is competing with Apple's iPad with a product half the price. Dana Mattioli from The Wall Street Journal explains that, this is good for retailers and ecommerce because tablets are the "ultimate buying machines." Mattioli points to research from Forrester, noting that while the conversion rate for personal computers is three percent, for tablets it is four or five percent. Moreover, shoppers using tablets place bigger orders compared with shoppers on laptops and desktops.

Currently only nine percent of web shoppers are using tablets, but the latest news from Amazon is sure to give that number a bump. Veteran journalist and blogger Martin Langeveld forecasts, "The biggest transformation wrought by the iPad will be to bring an enormous increase in online shopping." The numbers and recent news make his forecast prophetic, and he thinks online retailers will increasingly turn to tablet-friendly websites and apps to reach customers. Forrester Research estimates that an Amazon tablet could sell between three to five million units by the end of the year, and Langeveld predicts a saturated market will see 80 percent of households with a tablet device within five years.