2015 Black Friday: Record-Setter For Mobile Usage?

Thanksgiving and Black Friday are multi-billion dollar shopping days. The Thursday/Friday period brought in more than $2.5 billion in e-coomerce sales alone last year, and Shoppertrack put total estimates above $12 billion.

While the merits of Black Friday sales can be called into question, one thing stands out about 2015 in particular: it could be a record-setter for mobile devices. According to USA Today, Adobe estimates 29 percent of the holiday's sales transactions were booked on mobile devices. The figure was 22 percent last Thanksgiving, the report said.

Survey data from the National Retail Federation also predicts a record-setting mobile shopping weekend. Twenty one percent of shoppers are expected to make at least one purchase on a smartphone, the highest level in history.

Also of note, NRF says more shoppers plan to use their smartphone for research and miscellaneous tasks like looking up store information than last year. One-fifth plan to use a mobile device to look up product availability while in-store, the data added.

Retailers are doing their part to jump on the trend, and in turn, incentivize this behavior. Best Buy Co Inc BBY, Target Corporation TGT and Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN have all advertised apps that give consumers special deals -- the latter reports the majority of its shoppers purchase Amazon.com items via a mobile device.