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Well into the annual Cyber Monday shopping frenzy, online sales are up nearly 9% compared to last year, while mobile devices are driving more traffic and sales, continuing a trend established on Thanksgiving and on Black Friday. That’s according to IBM Corp.’s Digital Analytics service, which is reporting periodically on online commerce throughout the day.
In a related development with significance for Apple Pay, the new mobile-payments service from Apple Inc., sales on Apple devices continued to far outpace activity on devices running the Android operating system on Cyber Monday, traditionally a big day for online retailing.
Smart phones and tablets accounted for 21.3% of online sales as of 3 p.m. Eastern time, up 29.3% from Cyber Monday in 2013. But while phones are proving to be key contributors to e-commerce, larger screens are accounting for most sales. PCs contributed 78.7% of sales, followed by tablets at 11.5% and phones at 9.8%. PCs also generated a bigger average ticket, at $138.17, compared to $119.16 for all mobile devices.
Overall, merchants aren’t seeing higher average order values. The average ticket was $133.07, representing no change from last year despite a small increase in the average number of items per order. IBM attributes the flat average ticket to consumers’ increased use of rebates and online coupons.
When it comes to mobile devices, though, it pays to have customers using Apple. Devices running iOS controlled 26.3% of online traffic and 16.5% of sales, compared to 12% and 4.6% for devices running Android. More critically, the average ticket on Apple devices was $124.61, fully 21% higher than the average for Android users.
The dominance of Apple devices when it comes to sales and ticket amounts helps explain the enthusiastic response many banks and merchants gave Apple Pay when it debuted, despite the lower market share of iOS compared to devices running the Android OS. Among mobile platforms, Android holds a 10-point market-share lead over Apple, with a 52.1% U.S. market share compared to 41.7% for Apple, according to market researcher comScore.
