comScore: Online spending up on December 2010 figures 

Wednesday, January 05 2010 by Steve Swallow

comScore has revealed that Christmas e-commerce spending for the first 56 days of the 2010's November to December period experienced a major rise on the previous year.

Highlighting the evolving marketplace online, with many organisations using clever website promotion, it was discovered that no less than $30.81 billion (£19.8 billion) was spent online during this period - a 13 per cent increase on the same period in 2009.

The final week of measurement, which ended on December 26th 2010, saw consumer spending of $2.45 billion (£1.6 billion), an overall increase of 17 per cent on the corresponding week in 2009.

comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni was impressed at the statistics, noting that e-commerce's evolution - such as the use of search engine optimisation providers to boost ranking - has really improved the US' online fortunes, along with the bounce-back from the recession.

He explained: "For at least this holiday season, the American consumer has been able to shrug off the continuing economic challenges of high unemployment rates and depressed housing prices and spend at a rate that has been slightly stronger than we had expected. 

"After the past few years' struggles, it is gratifying to see e-commerce return to a state that can only be described as a very merry holiday shopping season."

The top growing retail categories established in the survey included computer hardware, which rose by an impressive 23 per cent. It is believed that the release of Apple's iPad and a plethora of e-readers is the main contributor to the sector.

Books and magazines were boosted in sales to the tune of 22 per cent growth, followed by consumer electronics (21 per cent) and computer software excluding PC Games (20 per cent).

Towards the end of last year, eMarketer concluded that Apple had sold around 8.5 million iPads in the US, commanding the majority of total national tablet sales at 88 per cent.

Living Streams "Improving clients' profitability through better use of the internet".