Mobile Shopping Leaps During Holiday Shopping Kick Off

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Dec. 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobidia Technology, Inc., a leading provider of mobile analytics, today released new insight into mobile shopping. Analysis of data gathered over the biggest buying day of the year, Black Friday, clearly demonstrates a growing reliance on and usage of mobile shopping applications by smartphone users, evidenced by major increases in usage of these applications in the U.S. during Black Friday 2013.

An analysis of usage of a set of representative mobile shopping applications (more than 25 including retail, internet, deal, and shopping aid apps) throughout 2013, compared to November 28^th, Thanksgiving, and November 29^th, Black Friday, reveals the following trends:

• The number of minutes spent in shopping applications on Thanksgiving and Black Friday jumped significantly above averages throughout the year.
  • Usage of mobile shopping applications on Thanksgiving increased by 48%.
  • Usage of mobile shopping applications on Black Friday increased by 86% relative to the average usage throughout the rest of 2013.
• This analysis of app usage on important shopping days clearly indicates that smartphone users are increasingly using mobile apps to replace or complement their physical and online shopping.  However, when comparing usage to core mobile applications such as Facebook, mobile shopping applications are still only accounting for a small fraction of mobile usage.
  • Within Mobidia's sample users, mobile shopping minutes made up on average only 4.23% of the minutes spent in Facebook over 2013.
  • On Black Friday, this percentage increased to 7.87%.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131204/SF27378-a)

Source: Mobidia

Note on chart: Usage minutes of mobile shopping applications are presented as a percentage of Facebook usage minutes to normalize the data.

• The data also shows strong growth of usage among top mobile shopping applications between 2012 and 2013 Black Fridays.
  • Long established popular mobile shopping apps such as eBay and Amazon showed single digit year over year growth at 9% and 6% respectively.
  • Less established mobile apps, such as Groupon and Dealnews, showed much larger growth of 70% and 32%.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131204/SF27378-b)

Source: Mobidia

"As expected, U.S. smartphone users in our sample of millions of users increased their usage of mobile shopping apps during the first big week-end of holiday shopping," said Chris Hill, vice president of marketing at Mobidia. "We saw increases across the board – increases in users of mobile shopping apps, increases in the number of minutes they used these apps, and increases in the number of unique views of these apps. Our sample was comprehensive of all genres of mobile shopping including retail, internet, deals, and shopping aids. It looks like consumers are making smartphones a critical component to their shopping experiences."

With a global set of data provided by millions of smartphone users, Mobidia is able to provide mobile operators, application vendors and the global mobile industry ecosystem with detailed and unique insight into subscriber behavior around data- and application-specific usage on all the networks to which smartphones and tablets connect, including mobile cellular and LTE, roaming and Wi-Fi.

For more information about Mobidia's mobile data, please visit Mobidia's website, where you will find detailed whitepapers, or Mobidia's Blog for periodic updates on data and analysis of mobile usage.

Note to Editor:

Mobidia analyzed data collected during 2013 and specifically on Thanksgiving and Black Friday from millions of global smartphone users. This data was collected on a strictly anonymous and optional basis from millions of users who have downloaded Mobidia's smartphone application, My Data Manager. The data sample represents smartphone users from all major, global geographies.

About Mobidia Technology, Inc.

Mobidia is a leading mobile analytics provider with the largest global sample of smartphone and tablet users. Mobidia's mobile analytics and metrics platform provides unique insights into mobile usage trends on mobile applications and mobile networks. Real usage from real users on both cellular and Wi-Fi networks provides a comprehensive and unique understanding of what people do and value in the mobile world.

Mobidia is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia with local presence in the U.S., Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.mobidia.com or call 604-304-8640.

SOURCE Mobidia Technology, Inc.