eBay sticks sell-as-you-go on mobile app
Insta-tat-flog at your fingertips
eBay is adding the ability to sell on the move, for those of us (mostly Brits) who find impulse buying isn't enough.
UK shoppers conducted 65 per cent of the mobile business done through eBay in Europe last year, spending a total of £64m. Now that's going to get even easier with new apps for Android and BlackBerry devices, as well as the ability to sell or buy tat without having to sit down for a moment.
Not that eBay is awash with tat these days – the tat bazaar has moved distinctly upmarket since its launch and these days there's not a lot to choose between Amazon's Marketplace and eBay's network of dealerships.
But we are at a loss to explain why UK punters are so addicted to online shopping from their mobile phones: we do know that it's mostly men, aged between 26-30, and that they're buying clothes, shoes, parts for their cars, sporting goods, home and garden stuff and consumer electronics – in that order.
Take out the mobile figures and the order changes. Fashion items still top the list, but technology and collectibles come second and third.
eBay reckons this is down to punters walking round a physical shop and comparing the prices to what they can get online. But we can't help wondering if the quality of today's TV is playing its part here too – chaps browsing for go-faster stripes while the missus catches up on EastEnders.
Either way, having a sellers' application, and supporting another couple of platforms, can only pile on the pressure to get round to that garage corner full of "stuff to be put on eBay when I have the time". ®
COMMENTS
Re: More nonsense directly from the eBay Dept of Spin
I do wish you lot wouldn't compare non-fatal technological issues to actual horrific accidents. I understand how hyperbole works but y'know, sheesh. (See also: accusations of Nazism, comparisons of UK regime to that of Zimbabwe, etc etc.)
Yes! Finally!
I've got a whole heap of stuff that I can't be arsed to put up there the traditional way. Being able to take a quick snap and post directly from the phone is going to be a God send!
@Sarah Bee
OMG!! You hyperbole Nazi -- I bet Mugabe would say exactly the same thing! This is just as bad as falling through a rusted safety barrier over a 100 foot wall into a VAT of acid which is being rapidly heated by the lava flowing from Ejafjallajokull!!!!
Well, it make sense
Since the advent of the smart phone, the target demographic mostly buys things while blind drunk in the pub (rather than in the old days, when they had to wait until they get home from the pub to make all their impulse purchases). This has greatly increased the number of potential transactions, but does mean that the user base risks becoming totally impoverished, while blessed with a superfluity of old bicycle wheels, football cards and collections of rare chewing gum wrappers.
The logic must be that they can now also sell all of the stuff they are buying, as they go. Soon it won't be necessary to leave the pub, at all, as the same items will have been sold, back and forth, several times in one evening, before returning the the same owner who originally sold it. You could even sell that nice car stereo, that the cheeky rogue in the hoddie just passed you, back to the man they stole it from - all without having to leave the cosy confines of the Dog & Rose.
An entire pub-based economy will then arise, founded upon buying and selling rubbish to each other, in order to afford the next Guinness. From Babylon baby, back to Babylon.
More nonsense directly from the eBay Dept of Spin
What on earth is eBay dabbling in all this new technology for—these headless turkeys can’t even get their principal marketplace web site to work properly—or maybe it is working as they intend. Does anyone know?
What possible good is RedLaser to eBay. Due to eBay’s constant fee increases, prices on eBay are no longer likely to be the best available. Merchants surely aren’t going to direct buyers to eBay when they can direct them to their own sites, or elsewhere, and avoid eBay’s ever higher and higher profit-sucking fees.
Why then would anyone (even eBay) want to promote a technology that is probably going to direct buyers away from their own principal site? Then, we have to assume that this most unscrupulous organization, eBay that is, won’t fiddle with the algorithm to favor themselves, don’t we? Sounds like another “Skype” purchase to me. Oh, sorry, I forgot, PayPal is going to be eBay’s major growth area in the future. Oh yeah, dream on …
You think that 1989 San Bernardino train disaster and its aftermath was spectacular? In my crystal ball I can see an eBay train wreck approaching; it’s due to arrive in the evening of 21 July; this one’s going to be as horrifically spectacular; but as horrific as it is going to be, you simply won’t be able to look away. Mark your diary so you don’t forget to watch, and have your video camera on the ready (catch the train driver—that’s the one behaving like an excited chimpanzee—waving his arms around in the air)—you may be able to sell the footage to the WSJ. (But, don’t worry, if you do happen to miss this event, there will be a repeat episode on 21 October.)
If nothing else it will be interesting to hear who John Donahoe blames this time for the fiasco (if you can find any mention of it) that has been eBay’s IT operations since April Fools Day; undoubtedly his creative reporting will show that it was all the fault of all those many unwashed, irritating, ignorant, “noisy”, flea-market passengers travelling in third-class—not the criminal fool driving the train, Donahoe himself, of course …
More fun with the ‘eBafia Don’ at:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6502877
