A new report published this week by the Centre for Retail Research on behalf of Kelkoo, the price-comparison website, showed shopping on mobile devices was most popular among British consumers.  UK consumers spent £2.97 billion in this way during 2011, said the report, which put it ahead of both Germany and France with expenditures on mobile shopping of £1.6 billion and £1.08 billon, respectively.  Next placed in the survey of 13 countries was Sweden with £430 million, which was interesting for a relatively small country. Larger countries lagged their Scandanavian rival such as Italy (£320 million) and Spain (£110 million).

The research firm also produced figures for 2010 when the same three countries held the top spots, although in that year it was Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg (which the firm covers with one figure) which grabbed the fourth spot with Italy narrowly behind in fifth. The report also projects forward to what might happen in 2012. It predicts the UK will maintain leadership among European countries with mobile shopping revenues of £4.53 billion followed by Germany with £2.68 billion and France (£1.85 billion). These are the only three countries with figures over £1 billion. Outside the top three, the research firm puts Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg back in fourth place ahead of rivals Sweden.

The total figure for all 13 European countries will be £12.38 billion in 2012 says the report which is a strong increase from the £7.66 billion in 2011 and the £2.03 billion of the previous year.

However the research firm has also produced a second set of figures that expresses mobile spending as a percentage of online sales. As previously, the UK leads other European countries. Mobile shopping in the UK represented 5.9 percent of total online sales in 2011. What happens in the next few places of the league table is surprising. Sweden jumps to second just narrowly behind the UK (5.8 percent). Next in line is Spain with 5.4 percent, the same country which lagged smaller rivals badly on total mobile spend.  Germany is next with 4.2 percent just ahead of Norway with 4 percent, whose performance also improves relatively under this measure. But France, which finished third in terms of total mobile spend, is nearly bottom of the table with 3.3 percent.  The research firm predicts the same pattern will persist in 2012.

What does this tell us? Obviously it’s unsurprising that Europe’s largest markets (UK, France, Germany) spend the most but Spain's performance might tell us a few things too. For instance that Spanish consumers might prefer shopping on a mobile rather than a PC relative to other higher spending countries. And there is a wider point here (and it’s not one about how statistics can look different depending on the angle you approach them). Aside from the UK’s predominance across both measures, the figures prove it’s still too early to draw any hard conclusions about which countries have a real passion for making payments on their mobile phones. The market is still up for grabs.

The editorial views expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and will not necessarily reflect the views of the GSMA, its Members or Associate Members.