Smartphone Shopping Over Thanksgiving Bigger Than Ever

In the days and weeks leading up to Black Friday (News - Alert) and Cyber Monday there was quite a bit of talk about how much money would be spent by people using smartphones and tablets. Leading up to two of the biggest shopping days of the year, analyst after analyst talked about how mobile devices were going to play a bigger part than we had ever seen before. One retailer after another talked about how they were getting ready for this very different shopping period. But was all the talk justified? Were retailers right in getting ready for such a high level of mobile shopping? If one report can be believed, then mobile shopping has indeed played a huge part in revenue this year.

Branding Brand is a mobile commerce analyst that, to be clear, is very specific when looking at sales numbers. The company only looks at sales that take place on smartphones and even then it only looks at certain stores that it considers clients. Still, the company is able to boast some rather high profile retailers such as Costco, Crate & Barrel, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Drugstore.com, Eastern Mountain Sports, GNC, Ralph Lauren, Sephora, Steve Madden, Timberland, Tumi, and West Marine. 

Despite taking a look at a rather specific portion of online retailers, Branding Brand’s numbers shouldn’t be ignored. According to the company, smartphone shopping on Thanksgiving Day was up 221 percent over Thanksgiving Day a year ago. Some of that can be chalked up to the number of stores that staged “Black Friday” sales much earlier than previous years. Still, more of the credit can go to people using their smartphone more often.

On Black Friday, Branding Brand said that smartphone shopping was up 128 percent over 2011. In addition, Branding Brands was able to tell that iPhone (News - Alert) users were far more likely to do some shopping on their phones. On Thanksgiving Day, 70 percent of all orders were placed using an iPhone. Just 29 percent of orders were made with Android (News - Alert) phones. The divide was almost as big on Black Friday, with 69 percent of orders made on iPhones and 29 percent on Android.