Four years ago, mobile commerce barely existed. Today, eBay expects to transact more than $10 billion in mobile volume for the year from its mobile apps and PayPal expects to transact more than $10 billion in mobile payment volume.

Mobile commerce is rapidly transforming the retail landscape and calendar. In fact, eBay Marketplaces enjoyed its biggest mobile shopping day on Sunday, Dec. 2 and PayPal reported that its total global mobile payment volume on the same Sunday exceeded that of Cyber Monday by more than one million dollars — making it the biggest mobile shopping day in the history of PayPal.

These numbers buck conventional wisdom, which assumes that Black Friday or Cyber Monday should be the biggest shopping days.

“We’re in a paradigm shift,” Steve Yankovich, Vice President of Mobile at eBay, told CNBC. Sunday, he said, was a ”day of relaxation” but because consumers always have their smartphones in hand, eBay Mobile facilitates shopping when “desire, demand, impulse is at its peak.”

eBay is also leveraging its mobile apps to facilitate local shopping.

Partnering with major retailers, like Macy’s, Best Buy, Toys R Us, Home Depot and Target, eBay is taking convenience to the next level with eBay Now and delivering products to shoppers in New York City and San Francisco the same day, often in under an hour.

In this fast-changing retail landscape, one thing is certain: More shoppers are searching the world’s largest inventory for great gifts at great prices via their mobile devices, giving them more time to spend with the people they love. What could be more festive?

eBay is expecting a merry mobile holiday season this year and TechCrunch agrees.

On Tuesday, the site reported that mobile-only dollars transacted by eBay users increased more than 200 percent in the third quarter, when compared to the same period in 2011.

TechCrunch also noted, as eBay previously reported, that the company expects eBay mobile transactions to exceed $10 billion in volume in 2012. That’s more than double the amount that exchanged hands — er, devices —  in 2011.

Additionally, more than 800,000 new users made their first eBay purchase on mobile during Q3 and over 1.8 million new users made their first eBay purchase on mobile from January through Sept. of this year.

As TechCrunch notes, eBay is unveiling a series of new, mobile-driven initiatives designed to engage shoppers through through their mobile phones, such as a mobile exclusive shoppable gift guide and mobile-only inventory and deals.

“The mobile business has gotten big enough so we are seeing similar behavior in terms of what people are buying on phones to what people are purchasing on the site,” Steve Yankovich, vice president of mobile, told TechCrunch’s Leena Rao.

eBay Inc. CEO and President John Donahoe recently told CNBC that the company had foreseen this trend and made a big bet on mobile several years ago that is now paying off.

“Consumers are making the mobile device the central navigation system of their lives,” Donahoe told “Squawk on the Street” on Nov. 9. “While it’s driving great mobile results for us, the coming year will be when the mobile device links the digital world to the physical world.”

Image courtesy of eBay Inc.

The growth of eBay’s mobile properties also aligns with the milestone of 100 million listings via mobile, as a record number of sellers choose to list their products on eBay through devices that didn’t exist just a few years ago. The following special infographic illustrates these milestones and more:

TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden writes “mobile payments continue to become more commonplace among retailers, smartphone consumers are already showing a pretty strong appetite for mobile shopping on their devices. According to a June 2012 survey among 5,000 Android and iPhone users in the U.S., Nielsen found that 47% of them have used a native shopping app on their phones. The analysts say that in total some 45 million U.S. consumers have used shopping apps, on average, 17 times in the month.”

For more information, check out the blog post on TechCrunch.

Stewart’s discussion with Donahoe covered eBay Inc.’s excellent, recent Q2 earnings report; the rapid growth of mobile shopping; challenges that eBay has faced and overcome; and the future of commerce.

“We saw the mobile revolution early and we made a big bet across the entire company,” said Donahoe. “We saw that mobile was an important factor for our customers. It was becoming the central control device in their lives. We didn’t worry if it cannibalized our existing business, because we knew it was what our customers wanted.”

Gerald L. Storch,  Chairman and CEO of Toys “R” Us, is also quoted in the story, regarding eBay Inc.’s focus on partnering with retailers for multi-channel commerce solutions.

“They’re a great partner,” said Storch. “In an omni-channel retail world, mobile, social, Internet, physical stores — they’re all linked. Customers want to interact with our brand at every level. eBay is especially strong in mobile and payment systems, but they address all those areas and help us compete. We do everything with them.”

“We stepped on the gas with innovation,” Donahoe said, in discussing eBay Inc.’s technology pipeline.  “We’re more technology- and innovation-driven than we’ve ever been.”

You can find the whole article here.

The eBay ID pack includes the following:
- eBay Mobile: Get access to new eBay messages and reminders and manage eBay account
- PayPal: Send money and manage PayPal account
- RedLaser: Shop smarter with RedLaser’s barcode-scanning app
- Local: Find local retailers and shop for the best prices using the Milo app
- StubHub: Buy tickets to concerts, sporting events and theater performances on the world’s largest fan-to-fan marketplace

The eBay ID pack is free to download with one of Sprint’s unlimited Everything Data plans.  Sprint ID devices include Samsung Galaxy S^TM II, Epic 4G Touch, Motorola PHOTON™ 4G, LG Viper™ 4G LTE, Samsung Conquer™ 4G,  Samsung Transform™ Ultra, Kyocera Milano ™, LG Marquee™ and Samsung Replenish™. To learn more about the eBay ID pack, visit here.

The eBay ID pack demonstrates eBay’s ongoing commitment to enable users to shop anytime, anywhere for the best products at great prices.

The deadline to cast a vote is April 26, 2012. The winners will be announced on May 1. eBay also received two Honoree distinctions in both Best use of Camera and Best Lifestyle categories for the eBay Fashion and eBay Motors apps, respectively.

Congratulations to all involved! Please vote!

eBay is no stranger to the Webby Awards. Most notably, the eBay Community was awarded a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award back in 2007 for the hundreds of millions of registered buyers and sellers who “made eBay a cultural phenomenon and permanently changed the way people connect, discover and interact with each other.”

Cheers,
RBH

** OVERVIEW: eBay Inc. at Mobile World Congress
** eBay and PayPal announce new partnerships at Mobile World Congress
** eBay Inc. CEO John Donahoe keynotes Mobile World Congress 2012; video interview with the Wall Street Journal

Cheers,
RBH

Check out the demo video of the app in action:

The standalone Watch With eBay app features:

• Watch With eBay: Couch commerce enthusiasts can tune into their favorite shows with a new, enriched version of Watch With eBay. The new standalone app includes a program guide consumers can use to access content related to their favorite television shows in real time with the ability to curate content by category. Shoppers will be able to browse designers from the red carpet of this year’s award shows or find sports memorabilia for their fan collections, plus much more.

• Shop Like a Star: Fans of television, film, sports and music are invited to shop through the lens of their favorite stars. Through eBay Celebrity – a unique shopping destination that combines celebrity experiences, memorabilia and merchandise with philanthropic causes – Shop Like a Star provides an inside look at featured celebrities’ favorite items, while eBay curates shopping results related to the celebrity picks and provides the option to donate to a benefiting charity at check out. Some celebrities will interact with consumers through original content, video and message boards.

A reminder that eBay Inc. will be at SXSW Interactive all week. Check out our eBay at SXSW overview for details.

For those of you on Twitter, please follow our @ebayinkblog handle for live-coverage of everything eBay here at SXSW and check out the hashtag #eBayatSXSW.

Chat soon and happy Monday!

Cheers,
RBH

I sat down with RedLaser GM, Rob Veres, to chat about what’s happening here in Austin this week:

Rob’s panel, Taming the Market in your Pocket, is from 9:30 – 10:30am on Monday, March 12 in the Sabine room of the Hilton Garden Inn. The hashtag to follow along with that particular panel is #TameMarket. Rob will be joined by Tamara Mendelsohn of Eventbrite and Michael Shim of Groupon. The panel will be moderated by Andrew Vilcsak of Airnbnb.

eBay booth
Stand 501, 503, 505, 507, 600, 602, 604, 606

PayPal
Sam Shrauger, VP of Global Product & Experience, PayPal will be giving a sneak peek of the all-new PayPal wallet.

From his PayPal Blog post:
During my session, I’ll demo an intelligent wallet that will do for digital money what internet mash-ups did for digital information: free it, so you can connect it, filter it, personalize it, share it and make it work the way that you want it to. Because PayPal’s wallet is digital – not just mobile, digital – it lets consumers do things with their money that have never been possible before.

His presentation, Why a Mobile Wallet Isn’t Going to be Enough, is on Tuesday, March 13, from 12:30 – 1:30pm in the Rio Grande room of the Hilton Garden Inn. You can also follow all discussion around the PayPal Wallet using the hashtag: #PPWallet

Don Kingsborough, VP of Retail, PayPal will be participating in the From Leather to Smartphone: The Wallet Evolves panel on Tuesday, March 13 from 5:00 – 6:00pm in the same room as Sam Shrauger’s presentation (see above). He will be joined by Jim Mccarthy of Visa and Steve Schultz of Pageonce. The panel will be moderated by Lauren Goode of AllThingsD.

TWITTER:
Follow these eBay Twitter folks for live-updates from SXSW:
@ebayinkblog
@paypal
@ebaymobile
@redlaserapp

I’ll be live-tweeting and reporting on-location from all eBay Inc. events using the hashtags: #eBayatSXSW and #sxsw

FLICKR:
All photos throughout the week will be uploaded to the set:
“eBay at SXSW 2012”

Thanks all and stay tuned.

Cheers!
RBH