Among all US web enabled mobile users, 13% of the users are buying online according to the spring survey 2010 done by PriceGrabber.com. The percentage compared to the year 2009 has increased and in the year 2009 the it was 10%. Among five people of respondents whose income is $150,000, use the mobile devices rarely for shopping according to “The Luxury Institute”.

According to the report from “The Luxury Institute” on march,2010, the M-commerce usage by the affluents are as follows. The people who frequently use mobile devices for purchasing are 7%, 13% of the people use them rarely, 80% of the people never use their mobile phones for purchasing. When we take the case of ultra affluents, 17% of the people use them frequently, 10% use them rarely, 73% of them never used mobile devices for purchasing.

Among the popular items which are purchased by the affluents using the mobile devices are movie and event tickets. But, the ultra-affluents are using mobile phones for buying the designer bags, shoes, jewellery and automotive products.
According to The Luxury Institute, 7% of the affluents opted in to receive marketing from mobile phones, among the ultra- affluents 8% receive marketing from mobile phones.

Apart from shopping, they are using their smartphones for checking the product information for comparing the prices of the products, getting the descriptions about the products, For information regarding the store. Mobile shopping varies among the different mobile users. In general, ultra affluents are less interested for doing the activities like price comparison.

This small write up should help understand this International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT-2000), commonly referred as 3G / 3rd Generation, is a set of standards for mobile telecom matching specifications by the International Telecommunication Union. This includes UMTS,  CDMA2000 and also the non-mobile wireless standards DECT and WiMAX.

Technically, GSM EDGE standard satisfies the IMT-2000 specification. However, EDGE phones are typically not branded 3G. Services for 3G include video calls, wireless data and wide-area wireless voice telephone. All of these services are made possible in mobile environment by 3G.

When compared to 2G and 2.5G services, 3G allows simultaneous use of data and speech services and higher data rates. This higher data rates mean at least 200 kbit/s peak bit rate to fulfill to IMT-2000 specification. It is common with today’s 3G systems to reach up to 14.0 Mbit/s on the downlink and 5.8 Mbit/s on the uplink in real life situations.