• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, February 17, 2012

IBM issued a series of reports during the holiday season showing a growing proportion of online retail traffic and commerce coming from mobile devices. The latest IBM data shows the same pattern playing out on Valentine’s Day. It found 14.5% of all online sessions on
retail sites came from a mobile device on Feb. 14, while mobile accounted for 10.1% of all online sales on Valentine's Day. The share of mobile sales more than doubled from last year's 3.9%. Other details from the study:

--A record number of consumers made impulse buys via their mobile device with mobile sales of jewelry and intimate apparel growing to 28.8% and 17.7% respectively.

--Mobile sales of items health and beauty items (lotions, fragrances and more)  growing to 15.1%, an increase from less than 4% last year.

--Apple’s iPhone and iPad ranked one and two for mobile device retail traffic (5.5%  and 4.9% respectively) and Android was third at 4.4%.

--The iPhone and iPad together accounted for 10.4% of all online retail sales on Valentine's Day.