IBM: Mobile devices contributed 21% of online sales in the U.S. on Black Friday in 2013

The shopping spree of Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving, the start of the Christmas shopping season) in the United States is coming to an end, and mobile shopping based on mobile phones and tablets is becoming more and more important. IBM's Black Friday shopping report shows that Apple iOS devices contribute more than 80% of mobile shopping.

IBM's research company reportedly analyzed several terabytes of shopping data from more than 800 retailers across the United States, and came to a number of conclusions about mobile shopping.

The report said that the use of mobile shopping in the United States this year has increased by 9% compared with last year. Mobile devices contributed 21% of all online sales, and mobile devices accounted for 37% of shopping visit traffic.

Smartphones and tablets have their own advantages and disadvantages. In terms of shopping traffic, mobile phones are twice that of tablets, but in terms of actual orders, tablets are 1.5 times that of mobile phones. Among all online shopping, tablets account for 13.2%, while smartphones account for 7.8%.

Previous reports have pointed out that when shopping, users mostly use mobile phones to browse, but the proportion of using tablets increases when it comes to operations such as checkout and placing orders.

As expected, if mobile shopping is divided into the two major operating systems, iOS and Android, Android is still far from being a rival to iOS. Obviously, owners of iOS devices have stronger purchasing power, and the experience of related shopping applications is also better.

Apple iOS devices accounted for 82% of all mobile shopping traffic on Black Friday, while Android devices accounted for 18%. iOS is more than four times that of Android.

Of all online retail sales, Apple's iOS contributed 17.3%, while Android devices only contributed 3.75%, meaning iOS is 4.6 times that of Android.

In terms of the size of each shopping order, iOS is $131.34 and Android is $111.35, with iOS being 18% higher.

Both shopping traffic and sales are monopolized by iOS and Android. Other systems outside the two major ecosystems, such as Microsoft WP and BlackBerry, are too small to be worth mentioning.

It is worth mentioning that previous third-party mobile shopping reports also concluded that iOS and Android devices account for an 80-20 split. For example, the statistics of the discount information aggregation website Dealnews found that in all mobile shopping, Android devices accounted for 26%, and the rest were iOS devices. Among them, iPad was the most powerful mobile shopping tool, accounting for nearly 40%, while iPhone accounted for 30%.