While most companies are expecting to report that they had an incredibly successful Holiday shopping season, one detail that may surprise many is how big a role mobile device shopping played. Amazon.com (News 
- Alert) is one of the companies that already is saying they had a fantastic Black Friday thanks in large part to the release of the Amazon Kindle Fire. While most people weren't able to use their Kindle Fires for Holiday shopping, mainly because they only just received them a few days ago, a recent study shows that the iPad and the iPhone had a big retail presence.
An industry analyst company known as RichRelevance says that between April 1, 2011 and December 18, 2011 the amount of mobile devices that were used to actually make purchases has been climbing to an all-time high. That trend was of course only expected to continue the closer the US got to Christmas. Quite a few stores have adopted the ability to search for and reserve products at their stores online and using mobile devices only makes sense if you are out and about doing your shopping.
While the study was quick to point out that Android devices were also being used, the vast majority of mobile devices that people used to go shopping were coming from Apple (News - Alert). The iPhone and the iPad combined for a total of 92 percent of all online mobile device shopping in December. That is actually a four percent uptick from when RichRelevance started their study in April.
Mobile device shopping increased as the year went on. In April, dollars spent on mobile devices totaled just 1.87 percent of total online shopping revenue. By December, that number had almost doubled to 3.4 percent of all online purchases. The agency also says that the number of online shoppers who were using mobile devices has also doubled. In April, nine percent of online shoppers were using their mobile devices and by December, 18 percent were doing the same.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this report is that those who used mobile devices had a larger Average Order Value (AOV) than those using desktops. Apple users topped the list with an AOV of $123, while Android (News - Alert) users came in second with an AOV of $101. Desktop users had an Average Order Value of $87.
Edited by
Rich Steeves
