April was a poor month for m-commerce sales, with IMRG figures suggesting that purchases made via safe shopping online from portable devices were down by a fifth, according to Internet Retailing.

In spite of this, the entire e-commerce sector enjoyed a 5.2 per cent rise in sales across the board, with desktop shopping helping to make up for the surprising slowdown in mobile use.

Analysts were sideswiped by this dip in smartphone shopping, largely because there was no sign of a slowdown based on performance in previous months.

Report spokesperson Bhavesh Unadkat said that in the main it was expected that April would be a good month for the UK’s retail sector because of the late arrival of Easter. However, it seems that this seasonal event was not enough to have an impact on mobile shopping, even if there was growth elsewhere.

Experts are now cautious about how the market will shape up over the next few months, with suggestions that m-commerce will potentially shrink further in size in the wake of these shock figures for April now being known.

The year-on-year performance potential is likely to be lower in light of the fact that 2018’s summer months had a number of major landmarks present in them to stimulate spending. This included the World Cup as well as the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Coupled with the unavoidable reality of limited consumer confidence caused by Brexit and the uncertainty surrounding the UK’s future, it may be that retailers are now looking at the likelihood of existing in a state of limbo until there is some kind of clear resolution on the table. Such a severe shift in mobile sales supports this theory and raises other questions about the potential of smartphone over-saturation to cause problems.