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Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2016 by the numbers

News Analysis
Nov 28, 20162 mins
Consumer Electronics

Many buying tech products over holiday shopping week via their smartphones and tablets

black friday cyber monday
Credit: Thinkstock

Quickly on the heels of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals come the number crunchers sharing just how the holiday shopping season is actually shaping up.

The Consumer Technology Association says that this is the year that the number of mobile (smartphone/tablet) shoppers has finally approached the number of online shoppers using desktop or laptop computers. 

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“The 2016 holiday shopping season is the tipping point for mobile shopping,” said Shawn DuBravac, Ph.D., chief economist, CTA, in a statement. “Consumers are shifting increasingly to mobile shopping, due to higher ownership rates of mobile devices and increasing ease, comfort and convenience.

It’s also been a record year for tech, according to the CTA, which says some 61.7 million American adults have bought or plan to buy technology products over the course of the big holiday shopping week. Ironically, most still are doing so in brick-and-mortar stores. The top tech purchases are TVs, tablets, smartphones and video game consoles, and total tech spending is expected to hit $36 billion this holiday shopping season.

The number of U.S. adults shopping during the week that began on Black Friday, Nov. 25, has risen to 135.9 million, up 6% from a year ago, according to the CTA. Of those, 76% shopping in physical stores and 57% shopped online (some did both).

Another booster of consumption, the National Retail Federation, is also buoyed by survey numbers. It says 122 million Americans plan to shop online on Cyber Monday, up from 121 million who planned to do so last year (based on numbers from Prosper Insights & Analytics).

Like the CTA, the NRF sees mobile shopping on the rise. It says more than 28 million people, nearly a quarter of Cyber Monday shoppers, plan to shop via mobile devices this year on Cyber Monday (that’s actually down a smidgen from last year).

Early morning looks to be the most popular time for Cyber Monday shoppers to snag their bargains. So supposedly, they won’t be killing too much productivity during the work day…

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