Of those who responded, 35% did not own a smartphone, while 26% owned smartphones but did not have shopping apps on them. The remaining 39% have smartphones with shopping apps already installed. Of all those who have smartphones, 84% responded that they would use them to help with their holiday shopping.

Of those who own smartphones, 42% responded that they were planning to download new shopping apps specifically for holiday shopping. Of that group, 70% selected comparison shopping apps as the kind they were most likely to download. Meanwhile, 65% said they would download coupon apps, 62% said they would download barcode-scanning price check apps, and 46% responded that they planned to download apps specifically geared toward Black Friday sales.

When those who planned to acquire new apps were asked why, 56% responded that they believed the apps help find the best prices on items, while 50% cited the convenience of receiving discounts and price information on their phones, 44% cited a lack of time to go shopping in the traditional sense, 38% felt the apps enhance the experience of shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, and 28% appreciated the location-based features of the apps.

Of those who intend to get new apps for shopping, 79% said they intended to use the apps for shopping on the go, while 74% said they would use them from home, and just 32% planned to use their phones to shop from work. This shopping is not limited to any specific kind of gift, either. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they would buy either big-ticket or small-ticket items from their apps, while 20% said they meant to do all their holiday shopping via smartphone app, 8% said they would only buy items that cost less than $100, and 5% said they would only buy items over $100.

$18.7 billion has already been spent online during the holiday season to date – a 15% increase compared to last year. There were three days last week that surpassed $1 billion in spending. Cyber Monday, of course, was the largest at $1.25 billion.

Tuesday hit $1.12 billion. Wednesday hit $1.03 billion. These three days were three of the four heaviest online spending days in history, comScore says. The other one was Cyber Monday last year.

“Cyber Monday kicked the week off with a bang as consumers opened their wallets to the tune of $1.25 billion, but it was only the beginning of a very strong week of online holiday spending,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “Tuesday and Wednesday followed with billion dollar spending days, helping Cyber Week reach a record weekly total of nearly $6 billion in spending. As the deals from this week expire, it will be important to see the degree to which consumers return to the same retailers to continue their holiday shopping, thereby helping improve retailers’ profit margins, or if we experience a pullback in consumer spending – which has occurred in previous years – before promotional offers and spending intensity pick back up in earnest around mid-December.”

Here’s a year-to-year comparison:

Free shipping has clearly played a big role in all of this. Here’s another look at the growth of this:

Here’s a chart showing how important this is to people:

“Free shipping is one of the most important incentives that online retailers must provide during the holiday season to ensure that shoppers will convert into buyers,” added Mr. Fulgoni. “Consumers have come to expect free shipping during the holiday promotion periods, and retailers, in turn, have realized that they must offer this incentive if they want to maximize their share of consumer spending – especially at the outset of the shopping season. In fact, more than three-quarters of consumers say that free shipping is important to them when making an online purchase, and nearly half say they will abandon their shopping cart at checkout if they find free shipping is not being offered.”

As the holidays get closer and closer, I’m guessing speedy delivery will continue to rise in importance to consumers. This is probably one reason that Google is looking at getting more involved in this area (to compete with Amazon).

The current generation of the so-called “console wars” between the Xbox, Nintendo’s Wii, and Sony’s Playstation 3 has been dominated by Microsoft almost from the beginning. The Xbox 360 was the first of the consoles to be released – hitting stores nearly a year ahead of the competition. While the Wii’s innovative design helped it gain popularity among casual gamers, it has never managed to dislodge Microsoft from its dominant position in the U.S. (the Wii maintains highest market share globally, however). Meanwhile Playstation, which boasted the most powerful technical specs of the three, also carried a price tag that many found exorbitant, especially in light of the Xbox and Wii’s much lower cost.

The Kinect sensor tracks the movement of players as they play, allowing them to game without a controller. It is compatible both with the original Xbox 360 and the redesigned Xbox 360 Slim, which released last summer. It continues a trend begun with the Nintendo Wii of using player movement to control gameplay. Shortly after the release of Kinect, Sony unveiled the Playstation Move controller, which mimics the function of the Wii remote in many respects.

While neither Sony nor Nintendo have posted their Black Friday week console sales figures, USA Today reports that Nintendo sold over 500,000 units of their Nintendo 3DS portable gaming system, as well as 535,000 of the long awaited Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, the latest installment in their flagship Legend of Zelda game series.

All in all, the game console market remains dominated by Microsoft, which boasts a 44% share of the market. October was the eighth consecutive month in which the Xbox had a market share above 40%. The console has had the top spot in the market for a total of eleven consecutive months. With more game releases and a re-design of the console’s Xbox Live dashboard still to come, there is every reason to believe that trend will continue.

Groupon describes Grouponicus as its “annual wintertime celebration, bringing you deals that are perfect for giving, and strategic hoarding.”

These include local deals, national brand deals, travel deals, and unique products like electronics, home goods, fitness products, etc.

Here’s the statement from Mason:

The quiet period is over! Our IPO process was a wild ride, but we’re excited to get back to business and are focused squarely on the future. The last six months have been the most productive in our history, seeing the launch of great new services like Groupon NOW, Groupon Rewards, Groupon Getaways, and Groupon Goods. And with the addition of product and travel deals that are handpicked to make perfect gifts, Grouponicus, our corporate wintertime holiday (currently only celebrated in the USA), is off to a roaring start. We sold over 650,000 Grouponicus deals between Black Friday and Cyber Monday – an increase of over 500% from last year – saving consumers millions of dollars, and delivering tons of business to our merchant partners.

A huge thanks to our customers and merchant partners, who continue to embrace Groupon with a passion that makes us feel like we have the best jobs in the world. We’ve got even more lined up for the next six months than we did in the last six months, so stay tuned! We’re back to communicating like a normal company again… well, as normal as we can muster at Groupon.

I wonder if this means were going to see a lot more product features announced, as the competition in the deals space isn’t getting much slimmer. Google, which tried to buy Groupon not that long ago, is going full force with Google Offers, frequently adding new markets, with more product integration of its own sure to come.

According to a comScore report, in relation to online retail, spending during Black Friday saw an increase of 26 percent when compared to 2010. The total for online Black Friday spending, by comScore’s numbers, is $816 million. Not only are the numbers promising, but the methods in which online shoppers conduct their business is expanding beyond the home/work computer.

Mobile devices in reference to online shopping is increasing as well. In fact, the rise in mobile technology adoption gives potential online shoppers a degree of flexibility the home computers do not. No longer are you required to be at computer at a certain times, all because of the freedom these mobile devices provide. In fact, the impact of mobile devices in regards to this flexibility have some speculating about the death of Cyber Monday, because shoppers are no longer required to be tethered to a non-mobile computing device:

But the loss of Cyber Monday, which got its name when most people had to go into their offices to shop online, shows how far broadband, and now mobile, have come.

In reference to the loss of Cyber Monday, Giga Om’s article offers an update:

Akamai noted on Monday night that Thanksgiving evening experienced the peak traffic of the holiday season, making this the year that turkey day topped Black Friday’s and Cyber Monday’s peaks.

This makes sense considering the explosive growth of smartphones. With these connected devices, users no longer have to worry about running to their workstation or their home rig to take part in these online sales, and because of the increased accessibility, more and more online shoppers don’t have to wait until they are in front of a computer to participate.

Over at Shop.org, the mobile device holiday shopping increase was forecast thusly:

One quarter of Cyber Monday shoppers anticipate using mobile devices. The real standout this year, of course, is the continued rise of mobile devices for Cyber Monday shoppers: 14.5% of all Cyber Monday shoppers expect to use a smartphone and/or tablet device for at least part of their shopping, double the number we saw last year (6.9%). Among online shoppers this year, however, that’s actually a whopping 23.8%. For a retailer, that’s another golden opportunity to proactively make an offer to a specific customer, especially if that retailer can tap into location-based mobile advertisements with a specific call to action.

Clearly, people want to spend during the Thanksgiving sales season, which kicks off the holiday shopping season on an annual basis. Furthermore, with more and more consumers acquiring mobile devices, it only makes sense that mobile device shopping increases as well.

While this is becoming less and less of an issue, especially for the bigger consumption sites, it is still wise to make sure your site is mobile-friendly, especially if you’re planning on capitalizing on this willingness to spend.

When it launched, it was almost guaranteed to be a big seller with the Kindle brand behind it, as well as the $199 price tag – much more affordable than the iPad (granted, you get what you pay for).

The holiday season has already provided a tremendous boost to the Kindle Fire’s sales.

“This was a great Black Friday for Target and for Kindle Fire, which was the bestselling tablet in our stores on Black Friday,” said Nik Nayar, vice president merchandising, Target. “We’re excited so many guests chose Target as their destination for the new family of Kindle devices and we’re sure Kindle Fire will continue to be at the top of wish lists this holiday season.”

“We knew Kindle Fire and the new E Ink Kindles would be highly desirable gifts this holiday season,” said Wendy Fritz, senior vice president of Computing, Tablets and e-Readers at Best Buy. “If this Black Friday was any indication, they are only getting hotter as we get into the shopping season.”

We’re still waiting on Amazon to release its Cyber Monday numbers, but there’s no reason to think the Kindle Fire didn’t continue to be a hot seller on the site.

It’s worth noting that even though Amazon runs its own version of Android on the Kindle Fire, and that Google and Amazon are becoming bigger competitors, getting Android in that many more hands (particularly in tablet form) has to be a good thing for Google.

View more daily infographic round-ups here.

Black Friday spending:

Cyber Monday:

© 2011 YouNeverLose.com

The Math-Science shortage:

Created by: Online Engineering Degree

Online visitors to department stores such as Wal-Mart and Amazon represented the greatest amount of traffic on Thanksgiving as most online consumers (65%) gravitated to the top 20 retail sites. Unsurprisingly, Wal-Mart.com was once again the top-visited retail site on Thanksgiving Day, making that seven years in a row for the retail giant. Retailers of videos and games saw the greatest hike in traffic with 28% more visitors this year than last year.

Beyond the traffic increasing, online sales as a whole grew when compared to the same period from last year. IBM reports a 39.3% climb in general online sales this year and attributes the growing trend of shoppers using mobile devices in order to find sales as a significant factor for the surge. The greater mobility and accessibility of online shoppers have caused some speculation as to whether Thanksgiving Day will supplant Black Friday as the target shopping day for retailers. With Black Friday more and more resembling a Black Flag mosh pit as customers try to secure coveted discounts on gifts, it’s hardly surprising that more consumers would opt out of the fisticuffs and remain unscathed while completing their holiday shopping.

In the years since its inception, Cyber Monday has grown to rival Black Friday as one of the biggest shopping days of the year, with some speculating that, at least in terms of year-to-year growth, it may even surpass its older cousin in coming years. Black Friday sales grew far more than expected this year, suggesting that Cyber Monday figures can expect to see a similar jump, if not larger.

How much of your shopping will you be doing on Cyber Monday? Let us know in the Comments.

Social networking sites like Twitter are awash with buzz about Cyber Monday. While most tweets are from retailers advertising their deals, or from price aggregators promising to help find the best prices, others range in topic from the humorous…

To the cautionary…

Nearly every retailer, from the smallest to the largest, has at least some sort of Cyber Monday special going, offering sometimes enormous discounts on a wide array of products. Some of the best deals are to be found in electronics. For example, Amazon has reduced the price of its Kindle DX reader by $150, and is offering massive discounts on a variety of gadgets, video games, and movies. Data obtained from PriceGrabber.com shows that these categories are some of the areas showing the most significant sales growth this year are already.

Here’s an interesting infographic, courtesy of Daily Infographic:



Enjoy all the chaos recorded during Black Friday 2011, where the joy of the beginning of the Christmas season was uploaded for all of us to see on YouTube.

The first set of videos shows that it’s not just the big ticket items people were going crazy over. Towels for $1.28!!!

Along with the random bouts of chaos, there was some extreme physical consequences. Not just for people, but all the Wal-Mart displays as well.

This one actually has some character, and plot development as well…

One of the new trends during the Black Friday 2011 season was the use of police force and pepper spray. No, this isn’t related to the meme.

(Warning: this one is bloody, and a step above the others on the disturbing ladder)

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend, and enjoyed some great Black Friday sales. Time to start training for next year.