A significant number of shoppers in the United States chose to conduct their Black Friday purchases from their homes using mobile devices this year. This behavior resulted in a new high for first-time mobile shopping app installations in the U.S., with Black Friday 2020 recording a record-breaking number of single-day installs, as detailed in a report by Sensor Tower. The company’s data indicates that U.S. consumers downloaded approximately 2.8 million shopping applications on November 27th, representing an increase of nearly 8% compared to the previous year.

Despite this figure, the report suggests that the rate of growth may not be faster than that observed in 2019, which also experienced an 8% year-over-year increase in Black Friday shopping app installations. However, this could be attributed to a shift in the timing of mobile shopping and app installations, now occurring throughout November. Retailers have adapted to the current pandemic situation and evolving online shopping preferences by initiating sales earlier or extending them for the entire month.

The available data appears to support this observation. From November 1st to November 29th, U.S. consumers downloaded roughly 59.2 million shopping apps from both the App Store and Google Play—a rise of approximately 15% from the 51.7 million downloads recorded in November 2019. This represents a considerably larger increase than the 2% year-over-year growth observed during the same timeframe in 2019.

A notable trend in mobile shopping is the increasing popularity of applications from traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Throughout the first three quarters of 2020, app installations for brick-and-mortar retailers increased by 27%. This pattern continued on Black Friday, with five of the top ten most downloaded mobile shopping apps originating from brick-and-mortar retailers, with Walmart taking the lead.

Walmart experienced the highest level of adoption this year, with approximately 131,000 Black Friday installations, followed by Amazon at 106,000, and Shopify’s Shop app at 81,000. Collectively, the top ten apps accounted for 763,000 new installations, representing 27% of all first-time downloads within the Shopping category.

It’s important to note that these figures focus solely on new app installations and do not provide a complete representation of the U.S. mobile shopping market, as many consumers already have these apps installed on their devices. Furthermore, a substantial number of shoppers continue to prefer online shopping through desktop or laptop computers.

To provide additional context, Shopify announced on Saturday that it had achieved record Black Friday sales of $2.4 billion, with 68% of these sales originating from mobile devices. Additionally, Amazon revealed today that its small business sales exceeded $4.8 billion from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, a 60% year-over-year increase, although the company did not specify the proportion of sales generated through mobile.

Sensor Tower and App Annie, a competing app store analytics firm, generally concurred on the top five shopping apps downloaded this Black Friday. Both firms identified Walmart as the most downloaded U.S. shopping app on Black Friday, mirroring its performance in 2019, and Amazon as the second most downloaded. They also agreed that Shopify’s Shop app and Target followed in third and fourth place, respectively. However, Sensor Tower ranked Best Buy in fifth place, followed by Nike, while App Annie listed Nike in fifth place and Best Buy in sixth.

The remainder of Sensor Tower’s top ten included SHEIN, Sam’s Club, Klarna, and Offer Up, while App Annie’s list was completed by SHEIN, Sam’s Club, Wish, and Offer Up.

The pandemic’s influence may not be immediately apparent given the growth in online shopping this year, but the resulting economic downturn has impacted how U.S. consumers are financing their purchases. “Buy Now, Pay Later” applications, such as Klarna, experienced increased usage this year and even made it into the top ten apps according to Sensor Tower’s data. The firm also observed that numerous new shopping apps launched this year focused on providing discounts and deals, and retailers extended their sales periods this year as well.