Well, if it’s true it was bound to happen but I think the statistics are skewed somewhat. Firstly, let’s take a look at the report from e-marketer that originally spawned off my post:

According to the chart, the US growth of online retail will slow between 1.5 and 2% each year from now on hitting 8.9% in 2012. This of course is natural in any type of market and online retail will definitely be maturing by then.

What it doesn’t take into account is that this varies completely by the category you look at, and they even say themselves that the chart does not include travel. For example, check out a chart from Jupiter which shows categories such as apparel including things like footwear and outdoor clothing growing 400% from 2004 – 2010.

Anyway – what do you reckon? Have they got it wrong or is e-commerce finally maturing? At least it’s going to stay ahead of off-line retail in a credit-crunch environment