Report: iPads and iPhones helping create 'couch commerce'

Above, you can see an intriguing graph from Compuware APM that shows a kind of kooky new trend in shopping this holiday season, something the researchers are calling "couch commerce." Shopping via the web is up big-time lately, and as you can see above, a big part of that is shopping from the iPhone and even more so from the iPad. Web users have been shunning the crowded and noisy retail experience for a few years now to shop online during the holiday shopping season, but the iPad has moved that experience from the computer over to the couch.

And that doesn't mean just apps -- online shoppers have spent over $18 billion already this holiday season on actual real world items (a rise of 15% from the year before), and of the shopping done over the Black Friday weekend last month, the iPhone and the iPad accounted for 10.2% of that traffic. That's interesting. I didn't personally buy anything online or in-stores over the weekend (boring, I know), but I did buy an international plane ticket this year using my iPad, which is a big chunk of money to add to the total. How about you?