Cyber Monday sales up 33%, new sales records set, IBM says

Cyber Monday deals lured a record number of online shoppers, leading to a 33% jump in U.S. sales compared with the Monday after Thanksgiving last year, according to a new IBM report released Tuesday.

Consumers spent an average of 2.6% more this year than they did in 2010, with the value of an average online order rising from $193.24 to a record $198.26 this year, according to IBM's fourth annual Cyber Monday Benchmark study.

Also increasing this year was the number of shoppers who made purchases on their smartphones and tablets, the study said. On Cyber Monday, a record 10.8% of people used a mobile device to visit a retailer's site, up from 3.9%  in 2010. Mobile sales also grew to 6.6% on this year's Cyber Monday purchases, up from 2.3% a year earlier, the tech giant said.

"Consumers flocked online, with shopping momentum hitting its highest peak at 11:05am PST/2:05pm EST," IBM said in a statement. "Consumer shopping also maintained strong momentum after commuting hours on both the East and West coast."

Two statistics not included in IBM's study was an estimate of how much in total was spent or exactly how many people were shopping on Cyber Monday. IBM produces its Cyber Monday shopping report by "analyzing terabytes of raw data from 500 retailers nationwide," the company said.

And, as a tech firm that sells software, tech infrastructure and consulting services to businesses, IBM's analysis of this data is a bit of a marketing opportunity for the company founded in 1911.

"Retailers that adopted a smarter approach to commerce, one that allowed them to swiftly adjust to the shifting shopping habits of their customers, whether in-store, online or via their mobile device, were able to fully benefit from this day and the entire holiday weekend," said John Squire, the chief strategy officer of IBM's "Smarter Commerce" team, in a statement.

So, how did Cyber Monday compare with Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving? IBM has some data on that too, reporting that it found Cyber Monday brought in 29.3% more online sales than Black Friday did (though many shoppers on Black Friday were in brick-and-mortar stores and not online).

According to a few other Black Friday reports, that day was a shopping sales record too. 

Most people who purchased items online on Cyber Monday and Black Friday did so using Apple's i-devices, which "continued to rank one and two for mobile device retail traffic" with 4.1% of shopper Web-surfing taking place on the iPhone and 3.3% on the iPad, IBM said.

Android came in third with a solid 3.2% of Cyber Monday and Black Friday Web traffic, the report said.

"Shoppers using the iPad also continued to drive more retail purchases than any other device with conversion rates reaching 5.2 percent compared to 4.6 percent," on other devices, IBM said.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Twitter.com/nateog

Photo: Cyber Monday specials on Target's website. Credit: Stan Honda / AFP/Getty Images

Apple: No Cyber Monday deals, but free shipping until Dec. 22

Apple isn't following up its Black Friday sale with any Cyber Monday deals, which is a bummer for those looking for a new Mac or i-device.

But from now until Dec. 22, the Cupertino-based tech giant is offering free shipping on all purchases from Apple.com.

It'd be fair to say that free shipping isn't much of a consolation when compared with the discounts being offered up on competing manufacturers' phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. However, it is also worth keeping in mind that Apple almost never holds a sale, and free shipping is a rarity for the company too.

Given that Apple isn't inclined to cut its prices, it may come as no surprise that, after a bit of hype, Apple fanatics reportedly turned out en masse on Black Friday for in-store and online price drops.

According to the website 9to5mac, Apple projected that it would see a 400% jump in sales on Black Friday. According to a leaked retail-store document, the website said, Apple passed that point by about 7 p.m. that day.

CNN, reporting on the 9to5mac report, offered up a bit of anecdotal evidence from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster who has "spent the day after Thanksgiving as he has every year since 2008: standing in an Apple retail store counting sales."

In eight hours of observation, CNN said, Munster recorded about 14.8 iPads per hour leaving the Apple store in a consumer's hands, and about 10.1 Mac computers being sold per hour.

Munster's unscientific observation found a 68% increase in iPad sales from 2010 and a 23% rise in Mac sales from his Black Friday findings a year earlier.

As of Monday afternoon, Apple officials were unavailable for comment on Black Friday sales performance and the ensuing sales reports.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

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Image: A screenshot of Apple.com's online storefront, which is offering free shipping until Dec. 22. Credit: Apple

Cyber Monday deals 2011: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Dell and more

Cyber Monday is to online shopping what Black Friday is to brick-and-mortar retail stores. And Cyber Monday 2011 is expected to be a big one -- possibly record-setting.

But, just as with Black Friday, everyone seems to be having a sale, and finding what you actually want online and not just what's cheap can become a chore.

So what sort of Web-only deals are out there? Here are a few from some major retailers.

Amazon

Discounted goods on Amazon.com can be found pretty much all year. So while a sale is nothing new for the online retail giant, the company is promising that it's Cyber Monday discounts will be significant. However, unlike most retailers, Amazon's Cyber Monday promotion isn't lasting just one day, but instead all week. Head over to Amazon.com for details.

Barnes & Noble

Amazon's e-reading and tablet rival, Barnes & Noble, is having a one-day Cyber Monday sale too. Among the promotions is a free $25 Barnes & Nobe gift card with the MasterCard purchase of a Nook Simple Touch e-reader, a Nook Color tablet or Nook Tablet. If you use any other payment method to buy a Nook you'll get no free gift card.

The bookstore chain, which sells DVDs, Blu-Rays, CDs and toys too, is also offering 30% off of any one item, 50% off New York Times bestselling books and up to 70% off Blu-Ray movies. Head over to BN.com for details.

Best Buy

Best Buy is the largest bricks-and-mortar consumer electronics retailer out there, but it doesn't shy away from Cyber Monday. Among the price cuts: a 55-inch Samsung LED-backlit TV, normally $1,500, is selling for $999.99, the HTC Titan running Windows Phone and the HTC Wildfire S running Android are both free with a new two-year contract, point-and-shoot cameras are $40 to $80 off, a number of laptops are on sale including a 15.6-inch Toshiba Satellite for $279.99, and Barnes & Noble's Nook Simple Touch e-reader is down to $79.99 from $99.99. Head over to BestBuy.com for details. 

Dell

Dell also regularly offers discounts on its website, but for Cyber Monday it has discounted 21 specific items, some of which are already sold out. The computer maker dropped the price a variation of its Inspiron 14R from $499.99 to $399.99, selling out its run of that laptop. Other laptops are on sale to, but at only $50 off rather than $100, such as the Inspiron 15, Inspiron 15R and Inspiron 17R.

Dell is also offering a $600 discount, down to $798, on a 46-inch Sony Google TV with 1080p resolution. And the Nintendo Wii with the New Super Mario Bros. game is down $15 to $134.99. Head over to Dell.com for details.

Staples

Staples is offering a wide range of discounts on gadgets, furniture and office supplies, including as much as $200 off Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard laptops, as much as $130 off printers, as much as $100 off point-and-shoot cameras and up to 50% off office chairs. Head over to Staples.com for details.

Verizon

Verizon Wireless' Cyber Monday sale is nearly the same as its Black Friday promotion: the Motorola Xoom 4G tablet is down to $199.99 and the HTC Droid Incredible 2, Sony Xperia Play and Motorola Droid Pro are free, as long as you get each item with a new two-year data plan as well. Head over to Verizon.com for details.

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Image: A screenshot of Dell's Cyber Monday sale at Dell.com. Credit: Dell

Amazon: Kindle Black Friday sales quadruple; Kindle Fire tops sales

Amazon.com said Monday that sales of it Kindle device lineup on Black Friday quadrupled the number sold on the day-after-Thanksgiving last year.

But just how many Kindle eReaders and tablets were sold? Amazon, again isn't saying, falling in line with the online retail giant's practice of not releasing specific numbers for its Kindle sales.

Since the first Kindle eReader was launched in 2007, Amazon has yet to release any specific sales numbers, only ever saying that the Kindle has sold millions.

Likewise, Barnes & Noble has made it a practice of never sharing its specific sale numbers for its eReader or tablet sales thus far. However, the company does say its Nook Color tablet is currently the top-selling Android tablet on the market.

Apple, whose iPad is the top seller in the tablet market, does release its sales figures for top-selling items. Last quarter, Apple said it sold 11.1 million iPads, up 166% from a year earlier. Since the iPad first launched in 2010, Apple has said it has sold more than 39 million tablets.

Amazon, based in Seattle, has been projected to sell between 3 million and 5 million Kindle Fire tablets before the year is done.

The Fire was Amazon's "best-selling product across all of Amazon.com on Black Friday," even outselling the Kindle eReaders that range in price from $79 to $189, the company said in a statement.

"Even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we'd already sold millions of the new Kindle family and Kindle Fire was the best-selling product across all of Amazon.com," said Dave Limp, the vice president of Amazon's Kindle division, in the statement. "Black Friday was the best ever for the Kindle family -- customers purchased 4X as many Kindle devices as they did last Black Friday -- and last year was a great year.”

The Kindle Fire was also the top-selling tablet in-store at Target on Black Friday, Nik Nayar, the retail chain's vice president of merchandising, said in the statement.

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Photo: Amazon's Kindle Fire, left, and an Apple iPad 2. Credit: Armand Emamdjomeh / Los Angeles Times

Asus Transformer Prime available for pre-order

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime doesn't yet have a solid release date, but the 10.1-inch tablet is available for pre-order.

Asus has launched the site asustablets.us which links to Amazon, B&H, Best Buy, GameStop and Tiger Direct, where the Transformer Prime is on pre-sale in the U.S., as well as Canada's Future Shop and NCIX.

Selling at a price of $499 for 32-gigabytes of built-in storage, or $599 for 64-gigabytes of storage, the Transformer Prime features a 10.1-inch screen with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, 1-gigabyte of RAM, an 8-megapixel rear camera with an LED flash and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. The tablet will also have a mini-HDMI port for connecting to an HDTV and a microSD card slot for added storage.

But the bigger draws of the Transformer Prime, so far, have been the potential performance might of the device's Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor. Asus has also said the slate will be among the first to run Google's new Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.

Quad-core processors, so far, have been found only in desktop computers and high-end laptops. Whether or not this will result in a better tablet, with tangibly superior performance over dual-core tablets such Apple's iPad 2, the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Motorola Xoom, among others, remains to be seen.

But the PC comparisons aren't lost on Asus. For a price of $149, the Taiwanese company is making available a full-sized keyboard and trackpad dock that will allow the Transformer Prime to mimic the look (and ideally the operation) of a laptop.

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Image: A screenshot of Asus' website, which links to retailers selling the new Eee Pad Transformer Prime tablet on pre-order. Credit: Asus

Black Friday: Apple discounts iPad, iPods, Macs

It being Black Friday today, Apple's annual sale (online and in Apple Stores) is here and the discounts are coming in about as expected -- small price drops but nothing too dramatic.

For the one-day sale, Apple lopped $101 off of the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iMac prices. Not discounted are the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro.

The iPad is on sale today too, with a $41 discount off of the 16-gigabyte model, $51 off the 32-gigabyte unit and $61 off of the 64-gigabyte tablets. The discount puts the iPad into a price range of $458 to $768, rather than the usual range of $499 to $829.

Apple also is taking a tiered discount approach with the iPod Touch, with the 8-gigabyte model selling for $178 ($21 off), the 16-gigabyte unit priced at $268 ($31 off) and the 32-gigabyte device at $358 ($41 off).

The iPod Nano is $11 cheaper than usual, selling at $118 for 8 gigabytes of storage and $138 for 16 gigabytes. Not on sale, iPod-wise, is the iPod Shuffle, pegged at $49, and the iconic, yet aging iPod Classic stuck at $249. Apple's most popular product, the iPhone, isn't on sale either.

Mice, keyboards and iPad covers are also on sale, as well as non-Apple products such as the Blue Yeti USB microphone, an M-Audio MIDI keyboard, a few laptop bags and backpacks, select iPhone cases and even Microsoft Office for Mac.

The full list of Apple's Black Friday discounts, which are being offered alongside free shipping, can be seen here.

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Image: A screen shot of Apple.com's online store, with Black Friday discounts. Credit: Apple Inc.

Black Friday: Verizon offering free Droid Incredible 2, $200 Xoom

Black Friday isn't here just yet, but Verizon Wireless is already offering some limited-time-only discounts on tablets and smartphones to kick off the holiday shopping season.

One standout is an HTC Droid Incredible 2 smartphone in a loud red, offered free with a 2-year-data plan. The Incredible 2, which launched in May, isn't the newest handset from Verizon to run Google's Android operating system, but it's still one of the nicest phones available from the carrier.

The model features a four-inch touchscreen, an eight-megapixel rear camera with dual-LED flash and 720p video, and a speedy one-gigahertz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The handset runs on Verizon's 3G network.

One downside is that the phone comes with only eight gigabytes of storage via an included microSD card. (The gigabyte or so of built-in storage is taken up by the Android operating system and preloaded apps). But after paying zero upfront, buying a larger microSD card is pretty reasonable.

Verizon is also offering as part of its Black Friday promotion the Motorola Xoom 4G LTE tablet for $199 with a two-year-contract.

The Xoom, which launched for $600 in February, features a handsome 10.1-inch screen with a high-definition 1280 x 800 resolution, a 2-megapixel front facing camera, and a 5-megapixel rear camera that can shoot 720p video. The Xoom also runs Google's Android Honeycomb operating system designed specifically for tablets, is powered by a one-gigahertz dual-core processor and comes with 32 gigabytes of built-in storage and a microSD card slot for those looking for more.

Other devices on sale include the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play smartphone, free with a 2-year contract, and the Motorola Droid 3 for $149.99 on a 2-year plan.

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Photo: The HTC Droid Incredible in red. Credit: Verizon Wireless

Black Friday: Apple's event website creates visions of Mac, iPad deals

Apple Inc. is managing to whip up a Black Friday frenzy by doing little more than putting up a simple Web page.

The company used the page on its website to announce a "one-day Apple Shopping Event" — an apparent discount day that will take place this Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

"You'll discover amazing iPod, iPad and Mac gifts," the site says, presumably meaning that those items will be on sale.

The blog 9to5Mac says a tipster passed along specifics about the deals — including $100 off Mac computers, $40 to $60 off the iPad 2, depending on the model, and cut-rate accessories.  If the report is true, the smaller MacBook Air will also start at $900, or $100 off — a deal that 9to5Mac points out is not quite as dramatic as the $200 discount Best Buy is now offering on some Air models.

There was no indication of whether the iPhone, Apple's most popular and profitable product, would be discounted below its base price of $199 with a contract. The iPhone 4S debuted in early October and has sold briskly.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the specifics of the deals the company would offer.

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Black Friday: Barnes & Noble to sell a $79 Nook Simple Touch

Barnes & Noble's Nook Simple Touch e-reader is getting a $79 variant just for Black Friday.

A limited number of the devices will be available at that price in stores only and only on the day after Thanksgiving, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season.

The Black Friday edition is the same as the regular $99 unit available in Barnes & Noble bookstores and online, except that the Black Friday edition has a white rim. The regular Simple Touch's rim is the same dark blue-gray as the rest of the exterior.

The other specs are the same. The device weighs 7.48 ounces, measures 6.5 inches tall and five inches wide and is about as thick as a No. 2 pencil. The 6-inch eInk screen renders text in black and white. The battery can go an average of two months before needing a charge. The e-reader can store about 1,000 books. More storage is available using the device's SD card slot.

The Simple Touch also features a nice concave back making it more comfortable to hold during long reading sessions.

Barnes & Noble didn't say how many of the special units would be sold, but they're likely to sell out quickly, as many deals on Black Friday do.

The company's biggest competitor, Amazon.com, sells a Kindle e-reader year-round at $79 but that unit lacks a touchscreen and runs ads on its home screen and screen saver. A touchscreen Kindle sells for $99 but still, unlike the Nook, runs ads. To get an ad-free Kindle, $139 is the starting price.

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Image: The Black Friday edition of the Nook Simple Touch as shown on BN.com. Credit: Barnes & Noble

Amazon gets jump-start on Black Friday with 'penny-pincher sale'

Amazon.com is getting into the holiday spirit with a "penny-pincher sale." 

The online retail giant said all phones from Verizon, Sprint and AT&T with a new line of service are on sale for a penny and include free two-day shipping. The offer is good through 11:59 p.m. Pacific time on Nov. 28 while supplies last. 

Shoppers who buy an eligible hot spot-ready smartphone and activate the hot spot feature will get a $100 Amazon.com gift card. Hot spot-ready smartphones include the Motorola Droid Razr 4G, Samsung Galaxy SII Epic Touch and HTC ThunderBolt 4G.

The Seattle company is trying to get a head start on Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Already, many major retailers including Wal-Mart have rolled out early deals to entice shoppers.

Amazon will offer its own day-after-Thanksgiving sales and had pledged to aggressively beat competitors' prices. 

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Photo: Some of the phones that are on sale for a penny on Amazon. Credit: Amazon