Mobile commerce is experiencing a trend path similar to that of online shopping in general, only somewhat more compact. While in the earliest days, both online shoppers and mobile shoppers reacted with some trepidation, the idea that it could be a safe, convenient alternative to regular shopping became quickly accepted. Indeed, Amazon released some information after the holiday shopping season that brought along with it the discovery that a lot of Amazon shoppers turned to mobile devices this year.

The Amazon report noted that more than half of its total shoppers during the holiday season shopped with the use of a mobile device, and also noted that, in the period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday (News - Alert), shoppers ordered just over five toys every single second.

A further report from Bard Equity Research's Colin Sebastian suggests that Amazon did over $20 billion in business on smartphones and tablets. Sebastian further noted that Amazon was one of his top picks in retail for the fourth quarter, and that Amazon's sales on Cyber Monday—the Monday directly following Thanksgiving—accounted for 36.8 million items, or around 426 items every second.

Those are impressive numbers, and the parade of impressive numbers didn't stop there. Amazon's new Mayday button—which connects Kindle Fire users to a live helper at Amazon via video chat--offered an average of nine seconds in its response time, even on Christmas morning. Amazon was actually expecting an average of 15 seconds in response time, which by itself would have been impressive, but beating an impressive estimate with an even more impressive actual figure is a feat worth noting. The stock price responded reasonably well, with a new approach made on all-time highs, which it reached just Monday at 405.

Basically, what the numbers out of Amazon showed is that there may be a whole new paradigm in the process when it comes to shopping. We've already seen how Millennial shoppers are tiring of the standards of holiday shopping, like the Black Friday (News - Alert) doorbusters and the ever-advancing start of the holiday season. We've also recently seen Amazon courting mobile device trade by offering up deals on apps, which isn't exactly the same, but it works toward the same end of fostering mobile device purchases on a mobile device. A recent push to improve the state of mobile shopping, with specifically tailored apps and even some connection to the brick-and-mortar arena, is also helping to fortify the mobile shopping concept by making it more accessible, and ultimately, more useful.

The idea of buying things on a smartphone, in the beginning, left some cold, much in the same way that people resisted the idea of using a credit card on the Internet. But it also seems like the time to acceptance is greatly shrinking in this case, and more and more, people are turning to a mobile device to shop. While this poses some particular challenges of its own, it also poses great opportunity, and Amazon is showing the entire retailing world just what kind of opportunities can be brought into play with mobile devices and shopping.