Apple Inc. (AAPL) Products Make Up the ‘Bulk’ of Mobile Traffic: eBay VP

Last week, we discussed Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)‘s dominant Black Friday, not in terms of sales, but by looking at how people were doing their online shopping (see “It Was an ‘iFriday’ to Remember“). Interestingly, Apple’s iPad accounted for close to 90% of the traffic on this date — in addition to Cyber Monday — even though it holds just over half of the official tablet market share.

For the most ardent Apple fanboys, this only confirms what Tim Cook said at his company’s last product release, mentioning a figure close to this 90% mark. Interestingly, VP of Mobile at eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) Steve Yankovich added to this conversation on Bloomberg TV yesterday on the network’s “Bloomberg West” segment. When asked just how much traffic Apple’s iOS family contributed to eBay’s mobile platform, which is estimated by Nielsen to have the largest pure e-commerce user base, ahead of even Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), he had this to say:

“[…] the whole iOS family, that’s the bulk of our number. So, engagement on iOS is high; it’s fantastic. Android has a similar size — and some people say a larger footprint worldwide — but the engagement is less, and you can speculate all kinds of reasons why.”

While Yankovich is saying what we’ve all heard before, it’s extremely encouraging for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) bulls to hear it from the largest mobile e-retailer. We’ll leave the VP’s call for speculation on why iOS engagement is higher than Android — at least on eBay’s platform — up to the reader, but it’s undoubtedly a function of Apple’s focus on usability.

Interestingly, when asked what he seeks in the future, Yankovich mentioned an interest “augmented reality” via mobile devices, though he wasn’t specific on the details. Technically, AR technology already exists in certain aspects of present smartphone design, but it’s worth mentioning that both Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google could introduce fully fledged AR glasses in the not-so-distant future (see: “Are Google Style, Apple Glasses Really That Far-Fetched?“).

What are your thoughts on Yankovich’s comments about Apple iOS engagement versus Android engagement? Does it support your conclusions drawn by earlier reports on this subject, or is data from one e-commerce company not enough to make such a claim about AAPL? Let us know in the comments section below.