US Holiday Season Mobile Spending +59%

US Holiday Season Mobile Spending +59%

(IDEX Online News) – Global media measurement and analytics company comScore, has released preliminary mobile commerce estimates that show holiday spending in the US via smartphones and tablets increased 59 percent in 2015.

Spending from mobile devices for the holiday period was $12.7 billion up from $8 billion a year previously. The result outstripped comScore’s prediction of mobile sales reaching $11.7 billion during the holiday season. As a percentage of digital commerce, mcommerce accounted for 18 percent in November-December 2015 up from 13 percent in the same period a year previously.

Desktop ecommerce also increased, rising 6 percent from $53.3 billion in 2014 to $56.4 billion in 2015. comScore had predicted that desktop ecommerce would grow by 9 percent to $58.3 billion – but the shortfall was offset by the performance of mcommerce.

Total digital commerce (desktop ecommerce and mcommerce) was $69.1 billion, a 13-percent increase from $61.3 billion over the same period in 2014 – but slightly less than comScore’s pre-holiday season prediction of a 14-percent improvement.

According to the results, Cyber Monday (the first Monday after Thanksgiving) with $2.28 billion in desktop spending was the heaviest online buying day for the sixth year in succession. Black Friday (the Friday immediately after Thanksgiving) was third with $1.66 billion being spent on that day. In total, there were 16 individual days where spending via desktop exceeded $1 billion – up from 15 a year previously.

“If there is an underlying takeaway from this holiday season, I think it will be remembered as the one where ‘mobile ate brick-and-mortar,’” said comScore chairman emeritus Gian Fulgoni.