• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, December 27, 2011

The mall is never closed in wired America. People just kept shopping online and especially over mobile device on Christmas Day. IBM tells the Associated Press that the dollar amount of purchases made over mobile devices on Dec. 25 was up 172.9% over the same day last year.

Christmas only helped accelerate a trend in “T-commerce,” purchasing over tablet devices. IBM reports that 7% of all online purchase for the day were made on an iPad. Forbes reports that 6.4% of all online sales came from the iPhone.

IBM tracks 500 retail Web sites other than Amazon. Overall for Christmas day, online shopping was up 16.4% over Christmas 2010.

According to IBM, people were pursuing holiday sales on the Web. Average order value was down. IBM Smarter Commerce Chief Strategy Officer John Squire told Forbes, “It shows us that retailers are doing a great job in providing deals or promotions, which is resulting in lower average order. But because there is spending online consumers are out looking for value and not worried about shipping targets.”

The wave of digital shopping continued into Monday Dec. 26, when IBM still detected a 10% lift in sales over Dec. 26 last year.