Black Friday is the official start of the holiday shopping season. It is also a gage for retailers. It’s a prediction on how well they will do during the holidays.  According to Coremetrics Black Friday was very good to online retailers. The sector delivered double-digit growth from the same time last year:

• Consumer Spending Increases: Online sales were up a healthy 15.9 percent, with consumers pushing the average order value (AOV) up from $170.19 to $190.80 for an increase of 12.1 percent.
• Mobile Shopping: Consumers are also embracing mobile as a shopping tool. On Black Friday, 5.6 percent of people logged onto a retailer’s site using a mobile device, a jump of 26.7 percent compared to the prior Friday.

We have not properly said good-bye to Black Friday and we are now looking to Cyber Monday online sales. Coremetrics is comparing sales between Black Friday and Cyber Monday:

• Consumer Spending Increases: Online sales were up 31.1 percent, with consumers pushing the average order value (AOV) up from $190.80 to $194.89 for an increase of 2.1 percent.
• Mobile Shopping: Consumers continue to use mobile as a shopping tool. On Cyber Monday, 3.9 percent of people visited a retailer’s site using a mobile device.

The numbers are a clear indication that consumers are shopping — even in these poor economic times. In an attempt to make every dollar count – consumers  are shopping smarter and spending smarter. They are using the web to do research before buying, they are shopping from home or shopping from their handsets.

These numbers are not surprising — online shopping has been on an up-tick. Today, more Americans are online than ever before. Here are a few data points from Pew Internet Research:

• 52% of American adults own a laptop
• 73% of Americans use the Internet

Mashable is running a poll — asking how will consumers shop this holiday season — so far 41.28% (or 315 votes) say they will Mostly Shop Online.

What are you thoughts of these numbers or shopping online?

What if you paid for your Internet access as if it were a utility bill?

This is what Mr. Randall Stephenson, AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Officer has confirmed. Stephenson made this comment during his keynote webcast at the Morgan Stanley Conference this past Tuesday.

For the industry, we’ll progressively move towards more of what I call variable pricing, so the heavy [-use] consumers will pay more than the lower consumers,” Stephenson said in the webcast of the meeting.

Read more at the Huffington Post….

I find it curious that Amazon is taking the fight to Apple. In my professional opinion this is an unfair match — with Amazon being on the losing side. Perhaps therein lies the problem — Amazon is no longer the giant in this space. Yes, agreed Apple started the fight with the combination of price matching and service (iBook Store). Then to add insult to injury Macmillan gets cozy with Apple so I understand Amazon’s need to attack.

And Steve Jobs wasn’t being coy about it, saying this morning: “Amazon’s done a great job of pioneering this functionality with the Kindle. We’re going to stand on their shoulders and go a little further.”

-Jennifer Van Grove, Mashable

Read more at The Huffington Post….