How will the impact of mobile phones pan out in the future?
It’s going to be profound. The iPhone was launched about two years ago and we launched an iPhone eBay app. In its first year, it did $700 million (Rs3,283 crore) of volume and this year it will do $1.5 billion to $2 billion. Around 11 million people have downloaded it. People are buying everything from cellphone covers to $250,000 Lamborghini on their iPhones. We did $60 billion of volume last year globally and mobile was about 1% of that. This year it will be 2-3%. The iPhone is explosive in the countries it exists. Android is now rapidly growing. We have seen that people who buy on iPad buy items that are about 30% higher in price than people who buy on the iPhone or PC. Are you betting on mobile solutions to increase e-commerce in India? How are you approaching problems of access? India is like a retail business. You have items listed by small businesses or entrepreneurs. eBay helps even out distribution inefficiencies. It also provides a great sense of improving price through value
