Online Technology Sales Surge

Even in bad economy, e-commerce rakes in big bucks

December 22, 2008

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The malls may be empty, but online cash registers are ringing up sales. Despite a sagging economy and predictions of a disastrous holiday shopping season, U.S. consumer technology e-commerce sales increased 19 percent for the first two weeks of the holiday season, according to The NPD Group's e-commerce weekly tracking service.

The report shows sales totaled $700 million for the period.

E-commerce sales for the week of Black Friday increased 22 percent over last year, while Cyber Monday week sales grew 17 percent. Cyber Monday week sales volumes were 50 percent higher than Thanksgiving week.

"We saw retail sales decline over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but e-commerce proved to be an enormous shot in the arm to the consumer technology industry this year," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. "The growth rates for Thanksgiving Week and Cyber Monday, as well as the sales volume levels, indicate a shift where consumers are spending."

The top three categories for e-commerce mirrored those of brick and mortar for the first two weeks of the shopping season. LCD TVs, notebook computers, and digital cameras were the top sellers. TVs and notebook PCs grew more during Black Friday week than Cyber Monday week but some of the more highly-promoted and aggressively priced Black Friday items at retail, such as digital cameras and GPS did better during Cyber Monday week.

E-commerce also put some life back into categories which have been slowing and declining at retail. Desktop PCs, hard drives, MP3 players, and even multi-function printers posted double-digit growth.

Video games and video game consoles also continue to be strong sellers this holiday season, according to NPD Group. In a separate report, the company noted that retail U.S. video game hardware and software sales during November were up 10 percent over November 2007.

However, some game manufacturers did better than others. Nintendo led the field, with sales of its wildly popular Wii console exceeding two million units in November. Twice as many Wii consoles were sold as Microsoft Xbox 360s.

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