• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, October 10, 2013

As the online advertising industry heads into the holiday season it will become interesting to see how much consumers spend through mobile ecommerce sites, and how much data they will part with while doing so.

Online and mobile sales rose 60% in Q3 2013, compared with the year-ago quarter, according to the IBM Quarterly Retail Online Index. Mobile contributed 14% to overall sales, with Apple iPhone generating more online traffic than any other mobile device.

The study found home goods and department stores led the uptick. The mobile percentage of traffic for U.S. retail overall, which accounts for smartphones, tablets and laptops, reached nearly 32% in the quarter, up more than 51% from the year-ago quarter, while online retail sales grew nearly 10%.

While the iPhone dominates as a percentage of mobile retail traffic, the iPad closely follows, generating 10.35% of traffic, with Android devices generating 9.51%, according to IBM.

U.S. retail mobile commerce sales will reach nearly $41 billion this year, up 68.2% compared with 2012, according to eMarketer. Double-digit growth will lead to more than $113 billion in retail mobile commerce sales in the U.S. by 2017, the data firm estimates. It also forecasts that by 2016, consumers will transact one-quarter of all retail ecommerce sales on mobile devices.

Perhaps most interesting, the eMarketer reports says smartphones will take 35% share of mobile commerce sales, or $14.59 billion, this year. In 2017, smartphones will account for 27% of retail mobile commerce sales, eMarketer predicts.

Perhaps that's why IBM earlier in the week announced the acquisition of Xtify. The mobile marketing company's technology will roll into IBM's Smarter Commerce suite of marketing campaign, segmentation and content marketing tools.

Along with Xtify's technology, IBM gains some impressive customers like 20th Century Fox, and Disney Stores.