eBay (EBAY) Plans Mobile App Consolidation

Last December we introduced a new shopping experience on the iPad that offered a fresh browsing experience across all of our major verticals including Fashion, Electronics, Motors, Deals, and more. We made it easier for our customers to find more of what they’re looking for and discover great finds from our unique selection of over 800M items for sale. Last week marked the beginning of a new chapter for eBay – and we are taking this opportunity to further simplify the buying and selling experiences for customers.

We are starting with a focused effort to bring the best of eBay’s features and functionality together in one easy place for our customers. We will do this by retiring some of our vertical mobile apps and migrating the functionality into our flagship eBay app. As an early leader in mobile commerce we have created significant business value and insights from these special-purpose apps. Over the years we have integrated many of the insights, learnings, and functionality into our core mobile experiences. Our objective is simple: give our customers the easiest way to experience the best that eBay has to offer.

As a result, several apps that you may have downloaded will soon go away, and the key functionality from these apps, notably eBay Valet, Fashion and Motors will be integrated into the core eBay apps. Here is the first phase of our sunset plans:

1. The eBay Valet app will be shutting down in the coming weeks, and sellers can still get the same great service at ebay.com/valet or use the selling tools within the core eBay apps.

2. The eBay Fashion app will be decommissioned in the coming weeks;

3. The eBay Motors app will be decommissioned later this year, and we aim to bring the rest of the best of the Motors app magic to the core eBay apps through this transition!

In addition, today we are retiring the eBay Now service in the U.S., including the local Brooklyn pilot program. Last year, we retired our eBay Now app and brought the program’s delivery capabilities and many participating merchants’ inventory into our core mobile apps. This significantly reduced our dependency on a separate standalone service. While we saw encouraging results with the eBay Now service, we always intended it as a pilot, and we are now exploring delivery and pick-up/drop-off programs that are relevant to many more of our 25 million sellers, and that cover a wider variety of inventory that consumers tell us they want. We will continue to pilot scheduled delivery in the UK.

We are confident these changes will lead to a simplified eBay experience for our customers, while preserving and extending the powerful commerce features unique to eBay. This is about empowering our customers and igniting the future of commerce to help eBay become the most inspiring place to shop.

To download the latest core eBay mobile apps, please visit:

eBay for iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ebay/id282614216?mt=8

eBay for iPad: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ebay-for-ipad/id364203371?mt=8

eBay for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ebay.mobile&hl=en_UShttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ebay.mobile&hl=en_US