We keep hearing how bad the current economy is, but if you are following the online shopping trends for the holiday season, that doesn’t seem the case so far. Overall, as of 4 PM ET on Thanksgiving day, online shopping is up 16.4% over last year, according to IBM Smarter Commerce stats being released by Forbes. But even more impressive is the mode of this shopping. It’s being done increasingly on mobile devices.
My husband and I started our shopping a few weeks back, and he was doing it on his computer. I’m going to continue it this week, and I’ll be doing it on my iPad. Looking at the stats; I’m not going to be the only one.
Strategy director Jay Henderson is figuring mobile shopping traffic was at 27.2% for the day, a definite increase over last year’s amount of 16.2% Overall, mobile shopping is 14.7% of all online sales. This includes all mobile devices, but Apple’s devices figure to make a significant appearance in these stats.
The iPhone is responsible for 9.9% of all online traffic, the iPad 9.7%, and Google Android is pulling in 7.4%. That’s over a quarter of all online traffic, so you can imagine that when it comes to holiday shopping, people aren’t going to put down their mobile devices and go back to a computer to complete this shopping.
Mobile phones are likely to be used for online shopping by people on the go. iPads are more likely to be used by people in their living rooms. If I’m shopping for gifts, yet stuck away from home for awhile with some time to kill, like perhaps in a doctor’s office, I’ll get out my iPhone and do a little shopping. But if I’m at home, I’m going to use my iPad. I want to see what I’m getting easier, so I’m going for the larger screen.
This is indeed what Henderson is assuming. He believes, “By the end of the day I think we might see the iPad wrestle away first place from the iPhone.” While the mobile shopping is being led right now by the iPhone, he thinks the iPad is going to take over.
The Chief retail strategist for Booz & Company, Thom Blischok, believes that the total for holiday e-shopping will reach $70 billion dollars, an impressive amount to be sure. It’s hard to say the economy is in trouble looking at that number, but what seems like it will hurt the economy is that the physical stores are going to be hurting financially while more and more consumers jump on their iPads to get their shopping done quickly and easily.
