Apple iPad Chipping Away At PC Use for E-Commerce, Dominates Mobile Shopping

As the two biggest shopping days of the year come to a close, analysts are crunching the numbers on who bought what with which device. IBM recently reported that mobile devices captured 18 percent of the shopping market on Cyber Monday with the iPad in the lead with 90.5 percent of all tablet use. E-commerce solutions provider Monetate offered additional information to show that consumers are shifting from traditional desktops and laptops toward mobile devices for their shopping needs.

According to Monetate’s Ecommerce Quarterly report, tablet-based purchases have begun to make a dent in overall online buys, causing retailers to rethink and redesign how they offer products to consumers.

The reports show that desktop and laptop traffic dropped from 92.33 percent to 81.60 percent from the same time last year while mobile devices like smartphones and tablets more than doubled their market share. Tablets took 8.37 percent of the share of websites visited, up from 3.16 in 2011, while smartphones took 10.03 percent, which is an increase of 5.48 percent from 2011.

AppleInsider spoke with Monetate Chief Marketing Officer Kurt Heinemann, who said he expects the trend to continue. “I truly believe that the tablet is best used as an ‘in-house’ mobile device — it’s a replacement for the desktop or the laptop,” Heinemann said. “The mobile device is really that second screen experience; it’s really married to [a user’s] media experience in a different way than the desktop.”

Monetate’s report shows that the iPad accounted for 88.94 percent of all website visits from tablets. Android-based devices only account for 6.34 percent and the Kindle Fire accounts for 4.71 percent.

Heinemann believes the iPad mini will be the game changer for ecommerce in the future. He told AppleInsider that the smaller-sized Apple tablet will begin to affect the market in early 2013 and might even surpass the full-sized iPad in online shopping.

Heinemann said that, because the impact will be so great, retailers will likely redesign their websites to the iPad mini’s dimensions.

“I think what you’re going to see is the iPad mini becoming almost a standard design format, because if you can design for the iPad mini, it’s going to work on the [full size] iPad, it’s going to work on the desktop,” he said. “So instead of taking the desktop and working it down to the iPad mini, think about taking your iPad mini experience and working it up to the desktop. It’s going to be that important.”

Analyst: Innovation at Apple is over; iPad mini playing catch up to Android; expects ‘mediocre customer adoption’

“Apple gave fans the mini-moment they had been waiting for Tuesday morning, introducing a smaller iPad to the world during a presentation at the California Theatre,” Patrick May, Jeremy C. Owens and Troy Wolverton report for The San Jose Mercury News.

 
“The smaller device will officially be called the iPad Mini and cost $329 and up,” May, Owens and Wolverton report. “[That’s] picey when compared with popular 7-inch tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7, which start at $199.”

 

MacDailyNews Take: Why would you compare a device offering 275,000 apps, finely crafted out of aluminum and glass, not plastic, with a 2mm thin display that offers over 35% larger screen area, 50% larger for surfing the Web in portrait, and 67% larger to surf the Web in landscape versus cheap app-less tiny screen tablets? iPad mini si not “pricey” at all. It’s the least expensive iPad in the world.

May, Owens and Wolverton report,” Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdhry… [said] in an email not long after it ended that ‘Innovation at Apple is over… The best is over for Apple. iPad Mini is playing catch up to Google Android, probably will have a mediocre customer adoption.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: iCal’ed for copious future use.

And, BTW, Apple can’t play “catch up” with anyone. Apple invented the modern multi-touch tablet. As with smartphones, Android devices are mere mimicry of Apple’s innovations*.

“Apple is selling Cadillacs to people who can no longer afford them.” – Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdhry, remarking on Mac prices, October 21, 2008

Four years later:
Mac is #1 desktop and #1 notebook in the U.S.
Mac consistently named #1 in customer satisfaction and reliability
Mac unit sales have outgrown the Windows PC market in every quarter for the last 6 years straight

Learn a new refrain; yours is tired and wrong, Chowderhead.

*Here’s what Google’s Android looked like before and after Apple’s iPhone:

Related articles:
Apple’s iPad mini destroys cheap, tiny screen Android tablets from Amazon, Google, et al. – October 24, 2012
Newsflash: Apple sells premium products at premium prices to premium customers – October 23, 2012
Mashable hands on with Apple iPad mini: A one-handed wonder – October 23, 2012
Starting at $329: Is Apple’s new 7.9-inch iPad mini too expensive? – October 23, 2012
Apple debuts 7.9-inch iPad mini; unveils new 4th gen. iPad with 9.7-inch Retina display – October 23, 2012