Travel search site Skyscanner has announced that 53 per cent of all its flight searches come from a mobile device.

In certain countries, that figure is even higher – South Korea leads the way, with 80 per cent of searches coming from mobile. The proportion is also over 70 per cent in Australia, Brazil, Canada and the US.

Downloads of Skyscanners apps – which include iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry – have increased by 400 per cent over the past year, with the app currently being downloaded at an average of once per second. The total number of downloads is now more than 20m, with the number of searches exceeding 250m.

“We’ve reached a clear tipping point for customers, particularly in the tech-savvy Far East, in the US and large emerging markets such as Brazil, who now want to plan and book their travel on the go,” said Skyscanner co-founder and chief strategy officer Bonamy Grimes. “Yet we’re also seeing our app growth boosting web traffic as users move between platforms to plan and book their travel.

“It’s clear that online businesses need to be mobile to succeed over the coming years and we’ve very much reached this point. We’ve focused our mobile strategy on making the most of the technology on each platform rather than replicating our site on a smaller screen. It’s far more consumer friendly and we’re seeing our users respond.”