47% of all smartphone owners shop on Amazon from device

Report from comScore shows Amazon tops the list of retailers cashing in on mobile shoppers

I recently made the charge that mobile shopping can be like shaving your legs without soap: it can be done, but it’s not fun.  I stand by that.  Don’t get me wrong—I love shopping from my iPhone, but a surprisingly small number of retailers have figured out the formula for m-commerce success.  It’s the little things—like setting up one-click purchasing, or having a PayPal option.  Don’t make me fish my credit card out of my purse and tap in my card number on those tiny little touchscreen keys.

A new report released Wednesday by comScore finds that four out of five smartphone owners—85.9 million altogether—accessed retail content from their phones in July.  Women and iPhone owners were more likely than others to shop from their devices, but even more noteworthy is where they were going.

Amazon sites drew nearly half of all smartphone owners in July, with 49.6 million unique visitors, or 46.6% of smartphone owners.  EBay came in second with 32.6 million uniques, followed by Apple, with 17.7 million visitors.  Among brick-and-mortar retailers, Wal-mart took the top spot with 16.3 million uniques, followed by Target with 10 million and Best Buy with 7.2 million.

While comScore doesn’t get into the specifics of why Amazon came out on top, it’s really little wonder.  First and foremost: one-click settings.  All I have to do is sign in and tap.  It’s just that easy.  And you can buy just about anything on Amazon, and (if I don’t already sound like a commercial for Amazon), what you can’t find on Amazon.com, you can more than likely find on a site that they own, like Zappos or any of the Quidsi sites.

Amazon also recently beat out Apple and other retailers in mobile shopping customer satisfaction.

Despite the fact that Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets run on the Android operating system, more iPhone users (90.6%) are shopping from their mobile devices than Android users (82.1%).  That is a little surprising, considering the fact that the Kindle Fire’s biggest sell is Amazon’s content arsenal.  Although, on that note, comScore does point out the fact that more Android users shop on Amazon than iPhone users (55% to 43%).

But the report doesn’t clarify whether or not it’s also taking tablets into account.

And in a statistic that surprises no one, women accounted for more time spent on retail sites than men on computers and mobile devices.  While the two were split evenly in terms of visits, women spent more time on retail sites, at 53.4% of minutes on desktop/laptop computers, and 56.1% of minutes on mobile devices.

Smartphone shoppers were also more likely to be younger and living in households with higher incomes.

“With nearly 86 million Americans now shopping on their smartphones, this pronounced shift in consumer behavior is simply too large for retailers to ignore, with the future of their business depending on how well they adapt to the new environment,” said Mark Donovan, comScore SVP of mobile, in a statement.

Image source: mobile-news.co.uk