IBM credits Apple for spike in mobile shopping

Apple's mobile devices were responsible for a tenth of all US online shopping on Black Friday this year, IBM said in a new study. The iPad and iPhone made up 4.8 and 5.6 percent each of all online shopping in the US, or 10.2 percent combined. Android, in spite of its larger collective market share, wasn't as trusted at just 4.1 percent.

Virtually no other mobile platforms were used for shopping, IBM said, with the 14.3 percent of total mobile traffic split solely between Apple and Google. The tally was over 2.5 times higher than it was last year, when mobile was just 5.6 percent.

Mobile users were more likely to act on the purchase itself. They were more likely to already know what they wanted or to move on quickly, as the bounce rate, or the tendency to leave a site or the web entirely, was highest on mobile at 41.3 percent versus the overall web's 33.1 percent. iPad owners were more likely to turn to the physical store: 4.6 percent of them converted to retail sales where just 2.8 percent of mobile as a whole would do the same.

Regardless of platform, online sales as a whole were up a high 24.3 percent, suggesting that declines at retail were compensated through the web.

The reasons for the mobile surge weren't explained by IBM other than the rise of smartphones and tablets. Apple's disproportionate gain might have been helped by the Apple Store retail app, which not only streamlines the buying process but now lets visitors check themselves out with any iOS device for off-the-shelf purchases.

By Electronista Staff