iPad Responsible For 48% Of US M-Commerce Sales

Research from the Adobe Digital Index has found that three-quarters of US mobile sales made over the holiday season were completed via iOS devices, contributing to significant growth in the m-commerce market, eMarketer reports.

Of all mobile devices, the shopping tool of choice for consumers was the iPad (48%), whilst only 6% of mobile sales were carried out on an Android tablet.

Adobe found Thanksgiving to be the busiest day for m-commerce in the US. Other popular days for online retail included Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which saw 14% and 12% of sales being completed via a tablet device, respectively. In fact, thanks to the iPad, tablets drove the majority of sales on all three of these days.

Mobile devices, however, should not be discounted. Despite tablets still holding a majority share in 2014 m-commerce sales over the festive season, smartphones have also seen a surge in their market share. With their m-commerce sales increasing from roughly one third last year to up to almost half of total sales this year, the research firm suggests larger screen sizes have played a vital role in this significant growth.

Data collected by IBM also established that smartphones are still a popular choice for browsing shoppers. Smartphones made up 31.2% of holiday retail traffic in comparison to 13.5% driven by tablets.

It should be noted, however, that despite the increasing popularity of mobile devices, desktops still reign supreme in the holiday online shopping market – accounting for 54.8% of traffic and generating 77.3% of sales.

Retailers need to be aware of changing online shopping habits where both tablet and smartphone devices are battling it out for their share of the expanding m-commerce market.