Online sales of physical products in Romania soared 30 percent year on year to over 1.8 billion euros (1.91 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016, industry data revealed on Wednesday.

The sales didn't include services, bill payments, plane tickets, event tickets, hotel reservations, travel etc., according to a report released by Romania's e-commerce market authority GPeC.

GPeC is the most important e-commerce event in Romania and the biggest Romanian online shop community. It also gathers and publishes the Romanian e-commerce market official figures every year.

Romania reported a significant increase in mobile device traffic, as more people own smartphones and use them to browse online shop content and shopping online.

According to the latest data, smartphone penetration rate grew significantly in Romania in 2016 to 70 percent, compared with 50 percent in 2015.

Over 50 percent of online shops visits come from mobile devices, while mobile shopping reached 35-40 percent of the total Romanian e-commerce market in 2016, showed the GPeC report.

Romania is one of the biggest e-commerce industries in Southeastern Europe and there are some 5,000 online stores active on the market.

The biggest online store in Romania is eMAG.ro, which expanded into Poland in January 2015. Other big online stores in the country are Altex, Domo, Flanco and Okazii.

source: Xinhua