Although firmly in second place, Apple's share of the worldwide mobile market is small compared to Android, but that hasn't stopped iOS-based devices from crushing competitors when it comes to app revenue, browsing the web, and, as it turns out, online holiday shopping. A report from marketing firm Custora reveals that iOS-based devices accounted for the vast majority (77 percent) of mobile shopping orders in November, while Android-based shoppers made the remaining 23 percent of orders.
The data, part of a larger report on e-commerce in general, were derived from an analysis of more than 500 million online shoppers across 200 U.S.-based online retailers, with more than $100 billion in e-commerce revenue tracked.
Apple's 54-point lead mobile shopping participation this holiday season is impressive, but is actually down slightly from the same analysis in 2014, when Apple took 79 percent of the mobile holiday shopping share compared to 21 percent for Android. Perhaps most distressing for fans of less popular mobile platforms, the combined share of orders from all other mobile operating systems -- Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Tizen, etc. -- didn't exceed the rounding point to escape zero percent.
While Apple will face continued challenge from Google in the mobile space, Custora's report also revealed that desktop-based browsing and shopping isn't going anywhere, at least not soon. While down 5 percent since last year, desktop-based shopping still took 70 percent of the overall number of orders in November, compared to 19 percent for smartphones and 10 percent for tablets.
Looking forward as many desktop users migrate to mobile devices, it will be interesting to see if the larger and generally more capable tablet category captures the bulk of the usage share, or if smartphones and "phablets" end up as the preferred platform.