A new report from Adobe indicates that online Black Friday sales so far this year are very strong, with Americans spending $100 million more than last year. Some of the hottest-selling items are technology products, including PlayStation 4 and Xbox One gaming consoles, Samsung 4k smart TVs and Beats by Dre headphones.
It appears American's are wasting no time getting into the holiday spirit. Although they hadn't even settled into their traditional turkey with all the trimmings on Thursday, consumers were tearing into online bargains at a record pace, and using their mobile devices more than ever to do so.
In the time period from midnight through 11 a.m. on Thursday, consumers had already unloaded half a billion dollars online on Black Friday sale items. Of course, Black Friday technically hadn't even begun by that time, but the sales did, and buyers were out in full force. The sales figures represent a 24 percent increase in the amount spent on online purchases during the same time period last year.
Consumers are turning to their mobile devices to shop online more than ever this holiday season, with over half of the online shopping done via a smartphone or tablet, and smartphone shopping registering a 30 percent increase over last year. The average discount was slightly less than last year's bargains—23 percent in 2015 vs. 25 percent in 2014—although discounts are expected to increase.
"Thanksgiving morning sales are off to a strong start, dominated early by mobile shopping, and today is expected to offer the highest overall discounts of the year.... We still expect the total day's online sales to come in less than 1 percent from our original prediction at $1.65 billion," reported Tamara Gaffney, principal research analyst at Adobe Digital Index, which uses Adobe data that tracks visits to more than 4,500 U.S. retail websites. The company earlier made its 2015 holiday sales projections [pdf].
The hottest and most popular items so far are, not surprisingly, technology products. Among the biggest sellers are PS4 and Xbox One gaming consoles, Samsung 4k Smart TV's, and Beats by Dre products, which include headphones and portable speakers.
Check out our Top 5 Best Black Friday Tech Deals.
