Traditional POS Purchases To Plummet Due To Mobile, IHL Reports
Written by Evan SchumanOver the next four years, retailers will buy an average of 10 percent fewer traditional POS units, opting instead to use mobile checkout, according to an IHL Mobile study slated to be released next week. But that may be a misleadingly small change, because some sectors—such as specialty retailers—will see traditional POS purchases plunge by 20 percent in that same timeframe, which means “roughly 200,000 units going away. That’s more than NCR ships for an entire year worldwide,” said IHL President Greg Buzek.
Several elements over the next few years—the report projects out to 2015—will make this change even more dramatic. Some 45 percent of new stores will be “mom and pops that are just starting. There you’ll see a tremendous impact,” because the stores won’t even start with a traditional POS, Buzek said. “Why pay $3,000 [for a traditional POS] when I can get an iPad and put Square on it? This is going to fundamentally change the mall in the next three years.”
Particularly hard hit will be department stores, specialty, soft-goods and restaurants, he said.
All things considered, it really looks like mobile may, if not kill, then at least seriously maim the POS star.
-Marc
September 29th, 2011 at 8:01 am
Point-of-Sale can also be employed as a browser-based cloud service over any desktop that can run a virtual machine like Microsoft Silverlight. Virtual Merchant is one example of this implementation.
In addition, I fully expect cloud-based point of sales systems to have more robust marketing and business intelligence to help smaller retailers with locating the best inventory at the best price, detect trend patterns and suggest what products should go on sale as well as create customized marketing material based on shopping activity.
October 1st, 2011 at 10:56 pm
I am definitely one to embrace new technology but don’t see a big boom for mobile taking over standard point-of-sale all-in-one units in restaurants anytime soon. There are just too many problems with mobile solutions. There are more concerns with PCI Compliancy, mobile POS units are not near as durable as all-in-ones, mobile units are much easier to misplace, are a higher target for theft and must have the battery replaced every year. Try dropping an iPad on the ground a few times and see how quickly the restaurant owner turns back to stationary units.
I know there is hundreds of millions of dollars being invested in companies that are designing mobile payment solutions, but from what I have heard those restaurants that have tried them have mixed results. I truly feel that a restaurant employee is much more efficient on a 15” screen than they would be on an iPad size device.
Though our company is constantly exploring mobile options we most definitely do not recommend them to “mom” and “pap” restaurants. We have talked to many tech support staff of franchises that have implemented mobile payment solutions and their feedback was not positive.
However, do notice that I have focused on the restaurant vertical of hospitality. The future is always hard to predict but I do not see all-in-one 15” table tops dying off any time soon.
November 4th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Great comment, Jason! I happen to agree completely and have written a number of blogs on retail-hardened POS vs. mobile, consumer grade devices. Motorola has just released an Enterprise-Grade device that can handle a 4-5ft. drop. It is made of gorilla glass, is meant for the greesy fingers etc. However, the 7 inch screen would not address the smaller screen issue you have.
My company sells IBM point of sale systems, both new and refurbished and other than a slow economy, we have not seen a change in sales for traditional, retail-hardened IBM systems. If mobility is where the industry is trending, I think it will be a few years before it truly “takes over.” There are still a lot of kinks to work out.
I love Apple products, but unless they become suited for the retail and hospitality environment, store operators are going to continue to learn lessons the hard way–one fall and they will see.