A Mobile Milestone for Christmas 2023

American shoppers dialed up $5.3 billion in 2023 Black Friday smartphone purchases, accounting for 54% of online sales for the day after Thanksgiving, according to Adobe.

Globally, nearly 80% of all online sales occur on a mobile device, per Statista, mainly due to the Asia-Pacific region. 

North America generally and the United States specifically have been slower to adopt mobile ecommerce, preferring the more expansive desktop experiences, but that will likely change in 2023 — at least for the Christmas shopping season.

Mobile to Pass Desktop

Seemingly everyone will shop on smartphones this 2023 holiday.

Adobe, which tracks holiday ecommerce spending in the United States, “expects mobile to overtake desktop for the first time this holiday season, with more than half (51.2%) of spend online to take place on mobile.”

As evidence, U.S. Black Friday mobile sales grew about 10.4% year-over-year. On Thanksgiving Day, typically even better for mobile ecommerce, shoppers spent $3.3 billion from mobile devices, an increase of 14% compared to 2022. 

Mobile Implications

The fact that U.S. shoppers increasingly use smartphones for purchases is not surprising. The surprise is that it took so long. Ecommerce and retail observers have predicted the rise of mobile ecommerce for more than a decade.

Thus it’s a good time to reflect on broader implications for all merchants.

Mobile apps. By some estimates, including data from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm, about one in five American adults has downloaded at least one of Amazon’s mobile apps.

Five years ago, Amazon said that 85% of its mobile shoppers used the app versus the website. Assuming the percentage is unchanged, we can see an immediate challenge for small and midsized online sellers.

In 2018, many more Amazon mobile shoppers used the app than the website. Here are the home pages of both in 2023, with the website on the left.

As mobile accounts for a greater share of ecommerce sales…