e-commerce in the US is up 13.6% at $38.8B in Q3 2010 vs. Q3 2009, more than 2x of traditional sales

e-commerce is continuing its progression despite a poor economic environment. As this latest report from the US Department of Commerce shows:

"The third quarter 2010 e-commerce estimate increased 13.6 percent (±2.5%) from the third quarter of 2009 while total retail sales increased 6.0 percent (±0.5%) in the same period. E-commerce sales in the third quarter of 2010 accounted for 4.2 percent of total sales."

 e-commerce sales totaled $38.8B for Q3 2010, accounting for 4% of total US Sales. In 10 years, this proportion did quadruple (1.2% in 2001).

According to another research from DataMonitor, the global online retail sector grew 14.5% in 2009 to reach $348.6B! When considering North America accounts for 45.7% of this total, that's nearly $160B in NA alone, up 60% from my last inquiry in Jan 2007.

At the same time, for H1 2010 we're still growing on the internet at a pace of more than 2M+ new web users per week according to Internet World Stats, where Asia is leading the curve to over 825M users vs. NA 266M, but their penetration rate is still low 21,5% in Asia vs. 77% in NA.

e-commerce is going to just explode in Asia over the next few years and my prediction is it's going to be mobile first!