Mark 2011 down as the year Christmas went digital, with six in 10 online Australians having purchased (or still intending to purchase) Christmas gifts through online retailers. This is a key finding in Principals’ latest Digital Pulse study, a quarterly review of online attitudes and behaviours, based upon a nationally representative sample of internet users.

The findings provide little cheer for local bricks and mortar retailers in the book, clothing, footwear, jewellery, music and movie sectors, with substantial numbers of shoppers taking advantage of the strong Aussie dollar to source these relatively lightweight (or no weight) goodies through overseas e-tailers.

But there are promising signs that Australians are favouring local e-tailers for other Christmas gift categories such as toys, electrical appliances, gourmet foods, wines and spirits, concert and travel tickets. Sectors where the weight, perishability or restricted distribution of the products favours the home side. It’s this need for local retailers to get much more specific about the merchandise sectors in which they can win against the offshore retailers that will seal their online fate in 2012.

The study also asked online Australians which digital device they’d most like to receive as a gift this Christmas. It will surprise no one to learn that Apple is the most desired brand this Christmas. And the iPad2 is the hottest property with 20 percent of wishes, beating out the iPhone 4S with 15 per cent.

It’s the lead that Apple enjoys over all other gadget makers this Christmas that is striking. Nearly one in two people who made a wish chose an Apple device. The next most desirable brand, Samsung, moves just one in 10 Australians. And Sony, a brand that once owned Christmas, is top of the wish list for only one in 20.

While Apple have done a masterful job positioning their products as tools of self-expression and individuality, their dominance over all other brands creates a perverse new marketing challenge. How to sustain the sense of brand rebellion when everyone is already on your side?

If e-readers were meant to be the hot new category this year, they’ve failed to capture the popular imagination. Just 5 percent of online Australians are hoping for a Kindle, Kobo or Sony e-reader in their stocking this Christmas. Interest in e-readers skews 50 plus, suggesting that these devices may steadily build support with a more mature audience than your average digital device.

At the end of a turbulent year, we were interested in exploring whether Australians had developed a sense of digital burn out, so asked which digital devices, if any, Australians were intending to turn off for the duration of their Christmas holidays.

While 15 per cent of Australians are looking forward to shutting down their desktop or laptop computers for the holidays and 10 per cent of Australians plan to silence their mobile phones, three in four of us have no intention of pulling the broadband cable from the wall. Clearly the internet has become embedded in our personal lives as much as our business lives and we feel the richer for it.

Finally we asked people if they were to make a New Year’s Resolution, to use digital devices in a different way next year, what it would be. Half of online users, particularly the young acknowledge that online activities can be great time-wasters and resolve to spend less time aimlessly surfing or Facebooking next year. But the older half of our nation envision investing even more of their time, to increase their digital knowledge, to learn how to use more features on their digital devices and to connect even more deeply with the people they care about most. Suggesting 2012 will be another step closer to a fully digital economy.

Wayde Bull is planning director of the brand consultancy Principals.