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New York--More than 12 percent of website traffic came from mobile devices in Q4 2011, a year-over-year increase of 102 percent, according to marketing and public relations firm Walker Sands Communications.

The percentage of website traffic coming from mobile devices in 2011 rose as the year went on, starting at 6 percent in Q1 and ending at 13 percent in Q4.

“When we began this study in Q3 2010, traffic originating from mobile devices accounted for a relatively modest portion--four percent--of total Web traffic,” John Fairley, director of digital services at Walker Sands, told Internet Retailer. “More than a year later, we have seen a significant uptick in mobile browsing … We can only expect this trend to continue as more consumers become smartphone users who browse on the go.”

Companies that have an online presence but haven’t developed a solid mobile strategy yet need to start taking the mobile platform seriously, Fairley added.

Most mobile traffic in Q4 2011 came from Android devices (46 percent), followed by iPhones (31 percent). iPads accounted for 16 percent of traffic, and Blackberry accounted for 4 percent.

Walker Sands notes that Android has overcome Apple in the top spot for mobile traffic and is continuing to grow.

“Android’s expansive portfolio of mobile products makes it more accessible to a broad base of consumers than Apple’s iPhone, which is why we see tremendous growth in the Android market share,” Daniel Laloggia, digital marketing manager at Walker Sands, told Internet Retailer.

Still, studies have shown that iPhone and iPad users convert and spend more via mobile commerce. For example, Walker Sands said, IBM Coremetrics shows that shoppers using an iPad lead to more purchases than shoppers on other mobile devices, and the conversion rate for consumers using iPads in October 2011 was 7 percent, compared to 4 percent for overall mobile devices.

Despite this, Walker Sands reports that Android is expected to capture more of the global smartphone market in 2012, and Laloggia predicts that mobile traffic from Android devices will also increase.

Walker Sands sampled 12 clients for this report. All client websites were U.S.-based companies, and all traffic data was collected by Google Analytics.