• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, April 2, 2015

While mobile continues to influence all aspects of shopping behaviors, it’s also starting to show respectable numbers in the area of transactions.

As we’ve long argued that mobile has multiple influence points  throughout the mobile shopping life cycle, measuring the transaction at the end of the process can mask the true impact of mobile on sales.

All that being said, the number of transactions being made on mobile keeps going up.

The latest tally, based on more than 1 billion transactions in 3,000 online retail and travel businesses measured by Criteo, shows mobile in the first quarter of this year accounting for more than a third (34%) of all online transactions globally.

In the U.S., 29% of all online sales now are via mobile, led by fashion and luxury, mass merchants and travel.

The mobile share of ecommerce transactions grew 10% in the last three months, according to Criteo, which projects yet another 10% growth in the U.S. by the end of this year. That would put mobile transactions at 33% of U.S. online purchases and 40% globally.

Consistent with other very recent research, Criteo found the majority of mobile transactions in the U.S. coming from smartphones rather than tablets, the commerce darling of not that long ago. Here’s a global snapshot of the smartphone market share of mobile transactions:

• 90% -- Japan
• 53% -- US
• 45% -- Germany
• 44% -- UK

An interesting side note is that 10% of all online transactions in the U.S. in the first quarter took place on an iPhone.

Android phones accounted for 6% of online transactions in retail and 8% in travel, while iPhones accounted for 10% of retail and 9% of travel.

While transactions are but one piece of the mobile commerce puzzle, there’s growth in mobile shopping adoption pretty much across the board. For example, this from other recent studies:

• The majority (67%) of consumers are using mobile to enhance their shopping experience, according to Redshift Research.
• Almost half (45%) of consumers want real-time promotions in stores, according to Accenture, with more than a third (36%) saying they would order out-of-stock items via their phone while in a store if they could.
• Total revenue from mobile apps will reach $99 billion by 2019, according to Juniper Research.

No matter where you look, there’s more money flowing through mobile commerce.