UK Christmas m-Commerce Rises 186.5% since 2010

According to the IBM Benchmark Christmas Season report, the use of mobile devices for shopping increased by 186.5% in the UK at Christmas, compared to the same period in 2010.

As a whole, m-commerce accounted for almost 13% of all online purchases, while 12 months earlier its proportion was 5.6%. In addition, 15% of the traffic to online retailers came from mobile devices, which is nearly three times higher than in December 2010.

Apple’s iPhone held the biggest share of mobile access to retail sites, with 6.4% of the traffic, followed by iPad, while another smartphone, Android, accounted for 3.6% of the total. The report found that iPads yielded the best conversion rates at 6.1%, whereas other mobile devices reached 3.8% on average.

Meanwhile, the growing use of iPhones and iPads has led to a surge in mobile phone insurance. Data collected by Experian Hitwise suggests that during the last three months of 2011 well over a quarter of all searches about mobile phone insurance in the UK were related to iPhones. Demand for iPad insurance almost doubled after Christmas, with most of the clicks driven by organic searches.

The authors of the report comment that insuring one’s mobile device is not a new thing but it has seen a significant rise lately, as consumers are becoming more conscious of the need for insurance.