From a survey by Fluent of more than 5,000 American adults to discover how they used their smartphones over the last 12 months, more than half of Android users and over 60% of
iPhone users reported making at least one purchase on their smartphones last year. When it came to making multiple purchases, nearly one in five iPhone owners said they made at least seven purchases
on their phones last year, compared to one in 10 Android users.
Consumers are equally comfortable shopping through mobile apps and mobile websites, says the report. Both
iPhone and Android users were divided down the middle when reporting whether they made the majority of purchases on their smartphones through mobile apps or mobile websites. In addition:
- More than two-thirds of respondents reported that mobile shopping is easy “most” or “all” of the time. Android and iPhone users agreed that mobile shopping is an easy
experience overall (61% of Android users and 64% of iPhone users).
- Increased security would promote even more mobile shopping, says the report. Roughly 30% of respondents across devices said
that advanced security would encourage them to shop from their phones.
- Email is the most popular mobile app. 28% of survey respondents listed email as their primary mobile phone activity,
though women had a higher percentage of email usage than men. The next most popular activities were gaming and surfing the web.
Across age groups and income levels,
most survey respondents said they used their smartphones for email, but gaming was the winner among those aged 65+ (33.6% compared to 19.5% favoring email). Men said that they mostly used their mobile
phones for gaming (33.6%) and email (21.2%) while women mostly used their mobile phones for email (34.4%) and social media (18.9%).
Among respondents earning $75,000 or less
in annual income, 53% said they have Androids, compared to 30.4% on iPhones, with the remainder selecting “other” (Blackberries, Windows devices, etc.) On the other hand, respondents
earning more than $75,000 per year were almost evenly split between Android and iPhone.
When asked what would make them more likely to shop from their mobile devices, survey
respondents across devices and age groups wanted increased security measures from mobile websites (30.2% on Android and 28.7% on iPhone) as well as faster loading pages (17.6% on Android and 19.7% on
iPhone). Men and women agreed that increased security would make them more likely to shop on their phones (29.3% of men and 25.9% of women), while 16.4% of men and 19.2% of women wanted faster loading
pages.
When asked the question, “is mobile shopping easy all of the time, most of the time, some of the time, or never” answers were virtually identical across
both iPhone and Android users, concludes the report. Younger consumers were the most comfortable with shopping through their phones. While 62% of those 45 and under said mobile shopping was easy
“most” or “all” of the time, that number dropped to 52% for people over 45.
Fluent’s Mobile Shopping Survey was conducted online within the
United States from January 16-18, 2015 among 5,269 adults aged 18 and older.
For more information from Fluentco, please visit here.