Black Friday & Cyber Monday Mobile Transactions Reached 37 Percent — Report

When AppLoving predicted that 30 percent of Cyber Monday transactions would come from mobile devices there was considerable skepticism on Twitter, including from comScore’s chairman. According to the data consensus Cyber Monday mobile buying didn’t quite hit 30 percent but it did earlier in the weekend.

Now, a new set of data from anti-fraud software company iovation makes a more audacious claim: “37 percent of retail online transactions from this Black Friday to Cyber Monday were made from mobile phones and tablets.”

Here’s iovation’s day-by-day mobile commerce breakdown:

1. 38 percent of transactions on Black Friday

2. 40 percent on Saturday and Sunday Nov. 29 and 30

3. 30 percent on Cyber Monday

4. 44 percent the weekend before Black Friday, Nov. 22 and 23

The company also says that of those “0.37 percent of all online transactions conducted from mobile devices were fraudulent.”

Given that these mobile transaction figures are much higher than those from the range of other sources such as IBM, Adobe, Custora and Monetate, I asked the company to clarify and explain further.

Connie Gougler, iovation’s Director of Marketing, said the following in email:

The 37 percent of mobile transactions is based on iovation’s client mix of worldwide retailers. The retailers that use our risk services generally offer mobile-ready websites and apps that are full-featured, offering sophisticated capabilities that help their consumers complete their transactions quickly and effortlessly. iovation also serves many of the largest online marketplaces, and the majority of their traffic is through mobile devices.

The company also found that on Black Friday, 24 percent of all mobile transactions came from Android, while 74 were from Apple devices and 2 percent were from other smartphones or tablets. On Cyber Monday, the numbers were nearly identical: 25 percent of mobile commerce came from Android, 72 percent from iOS and 3 percent from other operating systems.

Regardless of whether we accept the iovation percentages as precisely correct, this past weekend saw much higher mobile commerce figures than almost anyone expected.