Mobile commerce sales in the U.S. are expected to soar past $100 billion this year, driven in large part by strong growth on tablets, according to a new report.
Forrester Research projects sales from consumers shopping on mobile phones will increase to $38 billion this year and sales from tablets will hit $76 billion, or about $114 billion in total. That's up significantly from last year when Forrester projected smartphone commerce sales of $24 billion and tablet sales of $48 billion.
Sucharita Mulpuru, the Forrester analyst behind the report, attributes the increase to the fast pace of consumer adoption of tablets and mobile phones, Americans' growing comfort shopping on these devices and more merchants working to improve the mobile shopping experience.
Even so, Mulpuru notes that just a "minority" of consumers who own these devices actually shop on them.
"In fact, we estimate that only 38% of smartphone owners and 31% of tablet owners will purchase on those devices in 2014," she writes in the report. "We expect that figure to grow to 55% and 61%, respectively, for smartphones and tablets by 2018."