• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, March 26, 2015

According to new 2015 data from comScore Inc., in the new mobile economy, many U.S. consumers’ home desktop PCs are fossils gathering dust as these consumers rely almost entirely on smartphones and tablets to access the Internet. In fact, says the report, 10% of U.S. Internet users only access the Internet on mobile devices.

And there are more mobile-only shoppers than mobile-only Internet users: 13% of Internet users accessing retail destinations (sites and apps) only use mobile devices to do so, the study finds.

Even more intriguing, continues the report, is the percent of mobile-only shoppers at the top 10 retailers. The chart shows the top retailers, total digital unique monthly visitors (in millions) in January 2015, and the percentage of total visitors that only shop the retailers on smartphones and/or tablets, according to comScore:

Apple skews high because of the enormous number of Apple customers who make purchases in the App Store, iTunes and other digital properties on their iPhones and iPads, says the report. QVC skews high because it and most TV retailers have been pioneers in mobile commerce primarily because many of their customers are sitting in front of TVs with their mobile devices in hand. Ticketmaster skews high because tickets offer a business model especially suitable for mobile commerce: a straightforward product and checkout, with a product that increasingly winds up stored on a smartphone (a mobile ticket).

Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Kohl’s all are giant chain retailers where consumers increasingly are using smartphones as personal shopping assistants in stores. That leaves three web-only merchants: Amazon and eBay, which were very early innovators in m-commerce that today offer popular, rich and easy-to-use apps, and Netflix, which is by far the merchant among the top 10 with the lowest percentage of mobile-only shoppers (29%), notes the report.

Although mobile-only shoppers represent a significant percentage of individual retailers’ audiences, only one in eight digital shoppers overall are mobile-only.

Andrew Lipsman, vice president of marketing and insights at comScore, concludes that “… most consumers use both desktop and mobile for commerce… (depending on) time, location, occasion and retailer… because mobile often is the only channel by which a shopper might engage with a retailer… it is… critical that mobile apps and mobile sites be optimized (for mobile)...”

For additional information about the study, please visit Internet Retailer here.