Commentary

Smartphones Top Tablets in Online Sales Transactions

Tablet domination of mobile commerce may be coming to an end as smartphone purchasing moves up in the transaction chain.

The leadership of purchasing transactions by tablet rather than smartphone has been well-documented by numerous research studies.

Now, with larger screen sizes and consistently higher usage, smartphones account for the majority of mobile transactions for retail and travel in the U.S., based on a new study.

The majority (66%) of travel and retail (53%) mobile transactions now come from smartphones, according to the State of Mobile Commerce report by Criteo, a performance marketing company.

The study is based on transactions from more than 3,000 online retail and travel businesses globally, which have more than 1 billion transactions annually, representing $130 billion in sales. Consumer shopping by smartphone, tablet and desktop was analyzed.

Consumers tend to make mobile purchases across multiple categories, with fashion and luxury items leading the list. Here’s the list of what percentage of online purchases come via smartphone and tablet:

  • 33% -- Fashion and luxury
  • 27% -- Travel
  • 26% -- Sporting goods
  • 23% -- Mass merchant
  • 20% -- Health and beauty
  • 15% -- Home

More interestingly, the share of purchasing by smartphone is significant compared to by tablet, depending on the product category. For purchasing by either smartphone or tablet, this is the smartphone share:

  • 65% -- Fashion and luxury
  • 62% -- Travel
  • 49% -- Sporting goods
  • 49% -- Health and beauty
  • 47% -- Mass merchant
  • 32% -- Home

We’ve seen from a number of studies that the amount of money people spend via mobile device has been growing over time. Based on average order value, buying by mobile is nearing desktop levels.

And while smartphones account for more sales, the average order size for tablets is still somewhat higher in all categories, which is consistent with other studies.

Any marketer dealing with travel better pay attention to Android owners, since those phones now account for 6% of all travel transactions while iPhones account for 9%.

In many countries, Android generates more transactions than iPhones. For example, in South Korea, Samsung’s home base, of course, Android phones account for 86% of retail sales. In Brazil, it’s 71% and Spain 61%.

As we’ve noted here many times, mobile commerce is a global phenomenon, with mobile accounting for almost a third (30%) of all global online retail sales. Here’s the mobile share of online retail transactions by country, based on the Criteo study:

  • 49% -- Japan
  • 45% -- South Korea
  • 41% -- UK
  • 28% -- Spain
  • 27% -- US
  • 26% -- Germany
  • 24% -- Netherlands
  • 24% -- Italy
  • 21% -- France
  • 20% -- Russia
  • 10% -- Brazil

The study predicts that mobile soon will reach the 50% level of all US online transactions.

After getting accustomed to using their  phones to research products, mobile shoppers are coming around to using those same devices to close the deal.

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Hold the date for the second MediaPost IoT: Beacons conference in Chicago Feb. 10.

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