Users of Apple’s smartphones and tablets have traditionally made more and bigger ecommerce purchases than Android users, and on Thanksgiving day that was more true than ever, according to Cult of Mac.
IBM reported that iPhones and iPads were used for 25 percent of mobile sales on Turkey Day (up from 17 percent on Thanksgiving 2013) versus 7 percent of mobile commerce sales for Android (up from 5 percent in 2013). Average order size for iOS devices was down slightly (to $118.57 from 2013’s $120.03), but still heftier than for Android, where order sizes saw a steeper drop (to $95.25 from $114.19 last year).
And mobile devices generated more than half the traffic to ecommerce sites on Thanksgiving, representing 52 percent of site visits, up from 43 percent in 2013. Apple phones and tablets produced 36 percent of that traffic, versus only 16 percent for Android.
While this year’s numbers from the annual IBM study — which tracks 8,000 brands and 35,000 transactions — were mostly the-same-but-even-moreso, there’s one significant shift: While online customers still tend to shop on phones but buy on tablets, that gap is closing slightly. As tablet sales are plateauing and smartphone screens are getting bigger, this year tablets accounted for just under 18 percent of sales, up from 13 percent in 2013, while smartphones were at just over 14 percent of sales, up from last year’s 9 percent.