More SEA shoppers comparing prices via mobile

Some 38 percent of Singapore's traffic on price-checking site, PricePanda, now comes from mobile devices.

That's significant because the typical behavior on such sites tends to come from shoppers doing homework and comparing prices at home, usually on the desktop. The proportion of users doing this on the mobile is indicative of more shopping being done on mobiles--and more engaged shoppers doing price checks, rather than just making quick and casual purchases, on the phone.

Elsewhere in the region, the mobile numbers are equally high, and growing. In Indonesia, it's 45 percent, followed by 30 percent in the Philippines, and 23 percent in Malaysia, according to a spokesperson at PricePanda.

To chase the growing native mobile visitor base, the Internet Rocket startup launched an iOS app a couple of weeks back, about a month after it first released its Android app.

PricePanda's site in Singapore went live in July last year. Rocket then launched in Indonesia in September, before going to the Philippines in February, and Malaysia in June this year. According to reports, the site already listed 20,000 products and about 70,000 prices in its database earlier this year. PricePanda's spokesperson said these products are spread out over 100 categories such as computers, beauty, and home appliances.

There aren't too many similar sites in developed markets like Singapore, but in Thailand, PricePanda competes with sites like Priceza, and in Indonesia there's Telunjuk and PriceArea.