Smartphones are great for browsing and finding deals but when it comes to making transactions, the tablet takes over.
IBM has been monitoring web traffic for US online retailers over Thanksgiving and found that when it comes for searching for products or finding the best deals, smartphones account for 26.6 percent of site visits, compared with 15.3 percent for tablets.
However, when it comes to sealing the deal, only 9 percent of online purchases were completed via a smartphone, compared with 16.5 percent for tablets, meaning they're used 83 percent more often despite being less popular -- fewer than 40 percent of US households have a tablet compared to over 50 percent of all US mobile phone owners who have a smartphone.
However, while both have some way to go before they overtake the use of traditional PCs for online shopping, mobile devices account for 42.6 percent of online traffic (up by 32% on the same time last year) and there has been a 49 percent increase in online purchase via mobile devices. According to IBM, smartphones and tablet are used for 25.8 percent of transactions.
When the figures are broken down, it appears that iPhones and iPads are more commonly used than their Android counterparts for online shopping. Devices running iOS accounted for 30 percent of web traffic and 21 percent of sales whereas Android devices were responsible for 4.6 percent of sales and for generating 12 percent of web traffic.
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