IBM has released data information that it collected from tracking millions of transactions on hundreds of retail sties in the United States during Christmas Day. The goal was to discover trends among mobile shoppers and the results mean a lot for mobile in general and iOS devices in particular.
All of the data was based on the cloud-based IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark. This is the only digital analytics platform that tracks millions of transactions and analyzes terabytes of raw data from approximately 800 retail sites nationwide, according to reports from IBM.
According to the figures, Mobile on Christmas Day online was up 16.5 percent over the same period last year. Mobile traffic was a big part of that as 2013 was the highest traffic total the company has seen since it began tracking this kind of data. Mobile shopping accounted for 48 percent of all online traffic, up 28.3 percent compared to the same period this time last year. Mobile sales were up as well, approaching 29 percent of all online sales, which is up 40 percent from 2012.
As for iOS devices on the iPhone and iPad, versus Android smartphones, iOS came out on top in the U.S. iOS was more than five times higher than Android driving 23 percent versus 4.6 percent on Android. iOS users spent $93.94 per order on average, this is nearly twice that of Android users who spent $48.10 per order. In terms of overall traffic, iOS took 32.6 percent vs. 14.8 percent for Android.
Another noteworthy find from IBM this season included the difference between smartphone and tablet traffic and purchases. Smartphones drove 28.5 percent of all online traffic compared to tablets, which accounted for 18.1 percent, making smartphones the device of choice for browsing. However, when it comes to actually making purchases tablets took the lead, accounting for 19.4 percent of all online sales, more than twice that of smartphones, which accounted of 9.3 percent. Tablet users also averaged $95.61 per order, versus smartphone users who averaged $85.11 per order.
