Nearly half the 60 French retailers and travel companies in a recent survey by CCM Benchmark have mobile-optimized sites or apps.

45% of e-retailers polled in the first quarter say they offer mobile sites or apps, compared to 22% in the first quarter of 2011, according to CCM Benchmark, a French company that specializes in web technology.

A further 19% of the e-retailers polled say they plan to launch a mobile site or app this year, 7% plan to optimize for mobile sometime in the future and 29% say that they have no mobile plans.

Among the companies surveyed were Accorhotels.com, airfrance.fr, castorama.fr, darty.fr, Fnac.com, Habitat.fr, Ikea.fr, Lancôme.fr, priceminister.com, rueducommerce.fr, thomascook.fr, voyages-sncf.com and yves-rocher.com.

IPhones are the top smartphones used in mobile commerce, according to the study— accounting for two-thirds of mobile sales for the companies surveyed. Therefore, most businesses that are launching apps are focusing on the iPhone. However, smartphones using Google Inc.’s Android operating system are on the rise in France, the study says.

As in the U.S., e-commerce companies just now venturing into mobile commerce are building mobile sites first because they can render on all smartphones, unlike mobile apps that only work on a single type of mobile phone, CCM says.

When it comes to tablets, the study says Apple Inc.’s iPad accounts for two-thirds of tablet-generated traffic to e-commerce sites, and 80% of tablet sales.

Sales from mobile devices (not including tablets) accounts for an average 3% of all sales for those companies included in the survey that offer mobile sites or apps. However, for some of that group, that figure was 10% last year and could reach 20% this year, the CCM predicts. M-commerce represents 5-10% of sales for about 10% of businesses with mobile sites and apps, while it accounts for about 1% of sales for about 55% of such companies.

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