Despite web traffic from mobiles hitting 19.63% in January 2013, sales of goods through the mobile channel fell slightly in January compared to December, as the pre-Christmas m-retail bonanza tails off, according to figures from Affiliate Window.
Sales through mobile accounted for 14.72% in December 2012, says the monthly study, and dropped to 13.97% in January 2013. However, comparing January 2013 to January 2012, mobile channel sales were up some 116%.
Affiliate Window attributes the month on month drop to the removal of the Christmas shopping imperative. Traffic is up, it says, because more people received tablets and smartphones for Christmas and are using them to access the web in preference to PCs.
Looking more broadly, Affiliate Window has analysed buying patterns by device across 2012 and found that 23% came from iPhone, 59% from iPad, 12% from Android, 3% from Blackberry and 2% from all the others.
However, in the first month of 2013, iPad kept its 59% share, iPhone’s share of mobile retail fell to 18% while Android pulled up to 15%, closing the gap. In terms of sales, iPhone showed a decline in the volume of sales when compared to December’s figures. This would be expected with fewer transactions occurring in general in the post Christmas period. More surprising is that Android devices showed a growth in sales volumes, although this was minimal at 1.14%.
This data again backs up how important the growth of Android will be for m-commerce. With upgrade options typically Android devices, more and more consumers will be accessing the internet through these devices. It is important that advertisers also optimise for Android rather than simply focussing on Apple devices.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the year ahead.
