Shopify Rolls Out On The Android, Opens Platform To A Wider Market Of Potential Users

Yes, there is a race to get everybody—merchant and consumer alike, all on electronic payments. While the large majority of global commerce, buying and selling, is still largely on a non-electric, cash basis, electronic payments open up an entirely new market altogether. Shopify is on a race to get a major chunk of that market.

While Shopify was founded in 2004, providing an e-payment solution for merchants for over 11 years by now, it has been aggressively promoting its services on Facebook in 2015.It also went on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) in May 2015, and last week, it rolled out an e-payment and merchant solution, a POS system, actually, for the Android.

Opening itself to the world’s most widely used mobile platform is a great move for the eCommerce company, as a good chunk of small business owners may not be keen to invest on iOS devices, given the price point. An iPad can cost anywhere from $269 for the iPad Mini to $1079 USD for the iPad Pro, averaging at $399 to $499 USD for the iPad Air models. On the other hand, Androids can cost as low as $24.99 for Whitebox Androids, $49.99 for the Amazon Kindle Fire, and decently-powered Asus Androids range from $129 to around $300. Thus, with Shopify’s move to Android, merchants who choose to limit their hardware investments to around $200 can certainly move their payment processing to the platform.

Shopify is a very powerful eCommerce platform, as it allows merchants to manage not just sales, but also product inventories, customer records, and even stats and reports that help a merchant understand how to improve their business. It’s an all-in-one solution that may help a business manage their sales and overall business more efficiently. Whether this is more powerful than, say, a combination of Salesforce and QuickBooks remains to be seen, however.

The only weakness for the platform at the moment includes the fact that Shopify had already rolled out third-party apps and plugins for the iOS, as their implementation on the iOS is already mature. Meanwhile, its foray into the Android ecosystem is fairly fresh and new, so all the robust third-party features available on the iOS have yet to be fully ported to the Android. On the bright side, 2016 is just starting, so Shopify’s target market—the merchants, can expect Shopify’s Android version to mature and expand in features this year.

***

Shopify's Official Website: https://www.shopify.com/

More on Shopify’s expansion into Android: https://venturebeat.com/2016/01/14/shopify-brings-its-point-of-sale-system-to-android-devices/

More about Shopify: https://www.vbprofiles.com/companies/4f243e173ae4b24cf700331b

The best cheap tablets of 2015 from LaptopMag: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/best-cheap-tablets