More than 30 per cent of online grocery retailer Ocado’s checkouts now come via its mobile app on smartphones. When tablets are taken into the equation, the figure is 40 per cent, perhaps even as high as 45 per cent, and rising. The figures were revealed last night by Ocado CEO, Tim Steiner, as he delivered the British Retail Consortium’s Annual Lecture.

During a Q&A session after the lecture, Steiner said he didn’t think the press & Collect concept would ever take off for grocery shopping, and said Ocado would haven’t any interest in ever offering this kind of service unless if could operate it at a lower price than its home delivery service and pass many of the savings directly to the client, so offering an incentive for them to gather their groceries, rather then having them delivered.

Ocado operates its business, which currently involves fulfilling home deliveries for Waitrose.com, from two “dark stores” (aka warehouses), arguing that this can be a far more efficient approach to run a house delivery service than picking items from the shelves of a shop.

Asked what impact it might have on Ocado’s business if Tesco attempted to replicate its model, Steiner pointed to the event work that has gone into its eCommerce platform over the past 13 years, and told delegates: “If Tesco started tomorrow, it could still take them five years to get to where we’re. We will be able to individually pick 1.4m items an afternoon at 3 times the rate that you could in store. We’ve got a lead, because we were early during this business. People thought we were mad, but 10 years ago, our competitors were either too conservative, or invested inside the wrong assets.”

Last week, Ocado signed a £216m, 25-year deal to run Morrisons’ home delivery service. As portion of the deal, Morrisons is buying Ocado’s warehouse in Dordon, Warwickshire, for £170m, and leasing it back to Ocado. Morrisons may be investing £46m to expand the warehouse. Waitrose is consulting its lawyers in regards to the legality of the deal.

In response to a query from Mobile Marketing after the lecture last night, Steiner confirmed that Ocado couldn’t legally run the house delivery service for any further than two UK grocery retailers, but said it may operate a service for non-food retailers, or for grocery retailers outside the united kingdom.