Consumers ignore security risks and turn to mobile for their holiday shopping

Mobile is expected to be the most popular online shopping route this holiday season with 71 percent planning to use it.

Next-generation mobile security company Trustlook has carried out a survey of Android users to dig deeper into the expected mobile shopping behaviors for the 2016 holiday season.

Smartphone proliferation, faster network speeds, and slick shopping apps have combined to provide a far better experience for mobile shoppers and 40 percent of those surveyed prefer shopping on their mobile devices, compared to 18 percent who prefer shopping in a store.

The results show that 43 percent of users will spend more than $250 on purchases made through a mobile device, with Amazon, eBay, and Walmart being the most popular mobile shopping apps. This is in line with consumer behavior so far in 2016. More than a third of Black Friday sales ($1.2 billion) were conducted via mobile devices, according to Adobe, up 33 percent from a year ago. Meanwhile, Paypal saw a third of Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday sales passing through mobile devices on its network.

But despite 70.35 percent of users surveyed planning to make a purchase on a mobile device, 64 percent haven’t installed a mobile security app. "Mobile shoppers need to be more cautious than ever," says Allan Zhang, CEO at Trustlook. "This risk isn’t going away as mobile shopping activity ramps up".

You can see more detail on the findings in the infographic below and Trustlook has a free mobile security app to help keep your mobile shopping secure available on the Google Play store.

Image Credit: Slavoljub Pantelic / Shutterstock