This report isn’t about who sold more phones this holiday season, Apple or the plethora of Android manufacturers. A report from IBM analytics was released on Thursday and it doesn’t bode well for Android. This report, was on actual users and the operating systems they used to shop for holiday presents directly on their smartphone, or to assist them on in-store purchasing.
As was expected, mobile traffic was “the highest we’ve seen over this holiday season, accounting for 48% of all online traffic, up 28.3% compared to the same period last year,” IBM said. “mobile sales also remained strong, approaching 29% of all online sales, up 40% over 2012. Smartphones drove 28.5% of all online traffic compared to tablets at 18.1%, making it the browsing device of choice. When it comes to making the sale, tablets drove 19.4% of all online sales, more than twice of smartphones, which accounted for 9.3%.”
When talking about shopping on mobile devices the average order for tablet owners was $95.61 compared to $85.11 for smartphone users. This could be explained by the fact that more people are turning to tablets in the evening while relaxing, sitting with family and friends or even in bed. Tablets are clearly chopping away at the laptop. But what tells the bigger story is the OS war.
Even though Android commands 51.8% of the smartphone market share in the US according to ComScore and iOS accounts for 40.6%, IBM reports that “As a percentage of total online sales, iOS was more than five times higher than Android,” the report said “driving 23% vs 4.6% for Android.”
iOS users also spent more, almost double in fact. The average order made on an Android device was $48.10 whereas the average order on an iOS device was $93.94. When looked at those numbers and the tablet numbers it looks like a lot of consumers used iPads for their holiday shopping.
Some of this can be explained by the user experience with iOS on many top retailers mobile apps. Some retailers don’t even have an Android app where it appears in the retail world it wasn’t just mobile first but iOS first as well.
Business Insider is starting to wonder what Android users actually use their phones for. It doesn’t seem to be shopping or surfing the web. It looks like Android users use their phones for making calls, texting and emailing a trend that we’ve seen year over year since Android was introduced. With subsidies in the US, deals on Android smartphones and just the need to get any kind of “Smartphone” education for “non techie” Android users appears to be something that many users are lacking.
