iPhone, iPad crush Android in Christmas Day online shopping war

After winning the Black Friday shopping war against Android, iPhones and iPads scored a similar "win" when it came to Christmas Day online shopping in the United States. According to data from IBM analytics, which tracked about 800 nationwide retail sites, Christmas Day online sales were up 16.5% compared to last year.

Mobile traffic was "the highest we've seen over this holiday season, accounting for 48% of all online traffic, up 28.3% compared to the same period last year," IBM says. Overall, "mobile sales also reminded strong, approaching 29% of all online sales, up 40% over 2012. Smartphones drove 28.5% of all online traffic compared to tablets at 18.1%, making it the browsing device of choice. When it comes to making the sale, tablets drove 19.4% of all online sales, more than twice of smartphones, which accounted for 9.3%."

The average order for tablet owners was at $95.61 compared to $85.11 for smartphone users.

However, when looking at the obvious iOS vs Android rivalry, the report found the former held a comfortable shopping lead for the period. "As a percentage of total online sales, iOS was more than five times higher than Android," the report says, "driving 23% vs 4.6% for Android." On average, iOS users spent $93.94 per order, almost twice what Android users spent during the same time period ($48.10). As for overall traffic, iOS users had 32.6%, with Android accounting for 14.8%.

While shopping usage indicates that iOS was the most popular platform of the two leading mobile operating systems for both Black Friday and Christmas, Android actually has the larger market share in the U.S, at least when it comes to smartphone sales. According to recent data from comScore, Android had 51.8% share of the smartphone market at the end of September, followed by iOS with 40.6%.

When looking at social networks, IBM found that buyers referred from Facebook averaged $72.01 per order, with sales converting four times the rate of Pinterest referrals, which had an average of $86.83 per order.