Apple mobile devices dominate global shopping market share
As the global market volume generated by mobile devices reaches 50 billion dollars this year alone, Apple(AAPL) retains the lion’s share, with 54% of smartphone purchases processed by iPhones, and 80% of tablet shopping purchases made from iPads.
The data comes from Custora e-Commerce Pulse, which provides revealing insight into a global market in which mobile purchases account for one third of all online shopping.
Online shopping comes a long way from only four years ago, when purchases made using desktop PC held strong at 97 percent.
Among some of the influencing factors: HTML5 and responsive e-commerce. Since the introduction of these two technologies alone, the online shopping has changed, pushing retailers to provide a way to make purchases using mobile phones and tablets.
Improved reliability of 3G/4G signal, and the development of new, faster data transfer methods, allows more people to be connected to the web, and make purchases on the go.
Apple’s focus on innovation and the push for new ideas has driven the company on the path to dominate a prime market, in which iTunes and the Apple AppStore provide seamless platforms for online shoppers.
Custora’s data analysis show the difference in the average time spent on an e-commerce website, while using different devices, and found that tablet users spend just as much time on a shopping website, as PC users do, with conversion rates close to 3 minutes and 16 seconds, while mobile phone users spend an average of 2 minutes and 13 seconds on an online shopping website.
The shorter amount of time recorded on smartphone could be indicative of a faster, more direct shopping experience due to responsive interfaces that can be operated in a much simpler way than a desktop website. Yet it could also mean that mobile shoppers choose smartphones most often when they already know what they are looking for.
Apple’s biggest competitors at this stage are Amazon and Samsung, even if they share a mere 16 percent of the mobile market, together with Windows Phone and Google.