Purchases via mobile devices helped push overall online Holiday (November/December) spending in 2016 above $80 billion, based on the latest numbers from ComScore. According to those numbers, this represented a 17-percent year-over-year increase and marks the total for all purchases made online, mobile or otherwise. However, when you look at the numbers in a bit more in detail, it starts to become clear that mobile in particular is further driving online purchases. While the overall difference (mobile + desktop) increased by 17-percent compared to 2015, the mobile portion of that increase was significantly higher. As the image below shows, in 2015 desktop accounted for spending in the region of $56 billion, while in 2016, the figure for desktop did increase to $63 billion. An increase of 12-percent year-over-year but below the overall year-over-year average.
Mobile on the other hand was far more prevalent. The figure suggested by comScore for mobile in 2015 was a little under $12 billion. In contrast, the same figure noted for mobile spending in 2016 rose to just over $17 billion. A year-over-year increase of 44-percent. Another way to look at it, is that commerce through mobile devices in the November/December 2016 period accounted for 21-percent of the overall figure. This is again, a sharp increase from the 17-percent noted in 2015. A sign that comScore’s Senior Marketing Insights Analyst, Adam Lella, suggests is evidence that smartphone (and tablet) users are becoming more “comfortable” with shopping from their mobile devices.
What’s more is that this is not just an isolated event and instead marks the latest literature on the topic. Back in the close of 2016, comScore also highlighted how some of the biggest shopping dates of the year (Black Friday and Cyber Monday), also saw spikes in mobile usage during 2016. For instance, comScore accredited mobile spending with accumulating $1 billion on just Cyber Monday alone. A feat which certainly helped to boost these latest November and December figures and the noted 21-percent overall spending market share. At the close of 2015, some predicted that mobile would account for 45-percent of online Shopping by 2020. A little over a year later and based on numbers like these, that prediction now looks more achievable than ever.