The top 10 shopping apps on the US App Store added over 500,000 new users on Black Friday, up 16.3 per cent on Black Friday in 2017, according to figures from app analytics firm Sensor Tower. Overall new shopping app installs grew nine per cent year-on-year to 1.8m.

The significant growth in consumers turning to the convenience of mCommerce lines up with trends weve seen elsewhere from the start of this years festive shopping season. On Thanksgiving day in the US, mobile was responsible for half of all traffic to retail sites, and numerous other analysts have pointed to it being a landmark year for mobile shopping.

Amazon was the biggest winner according to Sensor Towers Black Friday stats, with the online retailer adding 115,000 first-time users to its flagship app, up 11.7 per cent on 2017. Walmart came in second, adding 95,000 first-time users, up an impressive 39.7 per cent on last year.

The top 10 was split relatively evenly between online-only retailers and shopping apps for traditional brick-and-mortar stores. The top 10 brick-and-mortar stores included Target, Nike, Forever 21 and Sephora, and saw combined new downloads increase by 24.7 per cent over Black Friday 2017. Online-only shopping apps grew approximately 20 per cent year-on-year, and included brands like Wish, OfferUp, Poshmark and Zaful.

With figures still coming in for Black Friday, Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday, it will be a little while until we have a full picture of what is typically the biggest shopping weekend of the year, but all signs so far point to a bumper year for mCommerce.