Black Friday's Record Sales Driven by Mobile Devices, Finds Report

In a first, online shopping on Black Friday is estimated to have hit the $3 billion mark in the US with a major chunk of the total sales coming from mobile devices, a report said on Saturday.

Adobe Digital Insights, which has been tracking e-commerce transactions, estimated sales of $3.05 billion (roughly Rs. 20,918 crores) on Black Friday 2016 - up 11.4 percent from the same day last year.

A TechCrunch report, citing the Adobe survey, noted mobiles had a significant impact on the record e-commerce sales on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.

"Major retailers, like Amazon, Walmart, Target and eBay, noted that mobile traffic and sales were on the rise," the report said.

Walmart and Target said the website traffic on Thanksgiving for mobile stood at over 70 percent and 60 percent respectively.

"This trend continued into Black Friday, as the sales event is currently tracking to bring in $1.13 billion (roughly Rs. 7,751 crores) in revenue, which is up 25 percent year-over-year," the report noted.

In retail stores also, mobiles drove the majority of retail sites visits at 56 percent - most of that (47 percent) was from smartphones, as opposed to tablets (9 percent).

"The negative impact on online shopping we saw following the election has not been fully made up, but consumers are back online and shopping," Tamara Gaffney, Principal Analyst and Director, Adobe Digital Insights, was quoted as saying.

"As spending ramps up on Black Friday, we are back on track. We still expect Cyber Monday to surpass Black Friday and become the largest online sales day in history with $3.36 billion," she added.

In addition, iOS continued to drive larger sales than Android. The average order value on iOS devices was $144 compared with $136 on Android.

Adobe also noted this year's top-selling electronics were Apple iPad tablets, Samsung 4K TVs, the Apple MacBook Air laptops, LG TVs, and Microsoft Xbox consoles.