Researchers at ETH Zurich have teleported information from one end of a superconducting circuit to another -- a distance of 6mm. The exper...
After a strong Thanksgiving holiday push in e-commerce spending, Black Friday online sales are already up more than 7 percent in 2013 over the same period last year.
The data, from IBM's Benchmark real-time reporting unit, covers 800 online retailers and millions of transactions. As of noon ET today, the average order value was $142.33 That compares to the average order value of $127.59 from yesterday.
Mobile shopping continues to grow, as mobile traffic accounted for 37 percent of all online traffic, up 36 percent compared to the same period last year. Mobile sales remained strong, reaching 21.5 percent of all online sales. Smartphones drove 24.4 percent of all online traffic compared to tablets at 12 percent, When it comes to making the sale, tablets drove 13.2 percent of all online sales, more than one and a half times that of smartphones, which accounted for 8.2 percent. Tablet users also averaged $137.96 per order, versus smartphone users, who averaged $119.21 per order today.
By smartphone OS, iOS was almost four and a half times higher than Android, driving 17.5 percent vs. 4 percent for Android. On average, iOS users spent $131.52 per order compared to $113.13 for Android users. iOS also led as a component of overall traffic with 25.8 percent vs. 11 percent for Android.
In terms of social, shoppers referred from Facebook averaged $93.73 per order, versus Pinterest referrals, which drove $103.30 per order. However, Facebook referrals converted sales at a rate more than twice that of Pinterest referrals.
A 7 percent increase in sales is a modest jump, considering that U.S. e-commerce spending last year on Black Friday was $1.042 billion, an increase of 26 percent from 2012. Black Friday online sales actually surpassed $1 billion for the first time last year. But comScore is forecasting double-digit growth in both desktop e-commerce and m-commerce spending for the holiday season. It's still early in the day, however, and the West Coast is just waking up. We'll update this post with numbers through the day.
Photo credit/Flickr/myeralan
Black Friday Online Sales Up 7 Percent; Mobile Is 37 Percent Of All Traffic And 21.5 Percent Of All Purchases
After a strong Thanksgiving holiday push in e-commerce spending, Black Friday online sales are already up more than 7 percent in 2013 over ...
Just in time for Black Friday, Bond is bringing its gifting platform to the web after spending a couple months as a native mobile app.
Bond, created by Sonny Caberwal, takes all the heavy lifting out of gift giving, with a large focus on the enterprise and professional gifts.
So let's say you just finished up a big interview at your dream job, or you just left the office of a brand new client after making a huge sale. That's the perfect moment to open up Bond and choose a gift in a certain price bracket, easily obtain the recipients address, and even formulate a hand-written note.
Oh, did I mention? Bond has a robot that writes hand-written notes. And according to Caberwal, the Robot is being refined to learn new versions of handwriting, so that one could eventually send a hand-written note to a friend or colleague in their own handwriting.
But why?
Well, after a few months on the market, Bond has realized that big corporate clients are going to be the future for Bond.
Caberwal eventually sees Bond becoming a platform that large corporations can customize to their own gifting needs. As a first step, the team is bringing Bond to the web.
Bond, The App For Giving Gifts, Lands On The Web
Just in time for Black Friday, Bond is bringing its gifting platform to the web after spending a couple months as a native mobile app. Bon...
For many years, Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving - marked the start of the holiday shopping rush. But with many (not all) physical stores closed on that day, a window of opportunity has emerged for e-commerce sites to push out offers and start selling on Thanksgiving itself. That has proven to be big business: online sales in the U.S. this Thanksgiving were up nearly 20% (19.7%) on 2012, with an especially strong push from mobile devices, which accounted for over one-quarter (25.8%) of all sales on the day and nearly half of all e-commerce traffic.
The data, from IBM's Benchmark real-time reporting unit, covers some 800 online retailers and millions of transactions. (We provided a progress of how the day developed yesterday, and today IBM is releasing the final, summary figures.)
IBM doesn't provide sales in gross dollar amounts - just in terms of growth over last year and average basket size. Its sales growth on T Forrester Research, however, predicts that overall sales this holiday season will reach $78.7 billion, up 15% over 2012, when sales were $68.4 billion, with 167 million shoppers holiday shopping online and spending an average of $472.
Although sales started out slowly yesterday, IBM says that they “skyrocketed” around 8pm Eastern time - coinciding with some brick-and-mortar stores opening for business. But as overall sales grew, the average value of orders declined, settling at $127.59, some $5 less than last year. Both the declining orders, and the jump in traffic, make some sense: they are both based on competition for consumers, and therefore lower prices for everyone.
Along with that, even those who operate brick and mortar stores are seeing logic in pushing deals online. IBM says that department stores' online sales grew 60% this year over 2012, with mobile up 44%.
Some other noteworthy data from IBM's report:
– Mobile is nearing half of all e-commerce traffic on Thanksgiving. In all it accounted for 42.6% of all traffic, and nearly 26% of all sales - up 49% on 2012. As IBM noted yesterday, tablets see the most actual purchases - 16.5% of all online sales - while smartphones accounted for 9%. Those buying on tablets, with an average of $126.49 per order, are nearly on par with average basket size overall. (Smartphones are at $110 per order, fairly impressive considering that you are browsing on a small screen.) iOS ended up accounting for over one-fifth (21%) of all sales, and $121.61 per order. Android accounted for only 4.6% of sales - a testament to why Apple and iOS will have staying power for a while with big brands and retailers, and consumers, regardless of how their bigger market share looks globally.
– Yesterday Facebook and Pinterest emerged as the two frontrunners in terms of social networks leading online sales referrals In the end, Facebook won out, averaging $105.97 per order, versus Pinterest at $103.05 per order.
– New York was the biggest online sales market on Thanksgiving. Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. followed.
Thanksgiving Digest (IBM E-Commerce Edition): Mobile 43% Of All Traffic, Over 25% Of All Online Sales
For many years, Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving - marked the start of the holiday shopping rush. But with many ( not all ) physica...
Walmart is already crowing about Black Friday and we're only a couple of hours into the actual day itself. That's because depressingly, Black Friday has somehow subsumed Thanksgiving Thursday and become the Day That Spans Many Days. Oh well; at least they sold a huge boatload of tablets. Walmart puts its one day sales of those mobile computing devices at 1.4 million, and while it doesn't break down by brand or model, the company also cites the iPad mini as one of a short list of top-selling items.
Also included in that list are the generic categories of big screen TVs and laptops, so you can imagine that the iPad mini likely accounted for a significant portion of those 1.4 million slates to be called out by name. Other top selling items included Microsoft's new Xbox One, and Sony's PlayStation 4, indicating that the home console market is still alive and kicking despite the rise of mobile game and sluggish sales for Nintendo's Wii U console, which made its debut last year.
It's worth noting that Walmart sold twice as many towels as it did tablets, at 2.8 million moved on the day when Americans get together to give thanks, stuff themselves with turkeys and buy towels. And of course, Walmart's press release sort of glosses over the fact that its stores have become sites for riots, fights, bad manners and all sorts of various reminders that humans are essentially the worst. At least some of those 1.4 million tablets sold went to the victors of squabbles, according to Twitter.
NEVER will I go to Walmart black Friday again I got stuck in the middle of a fight over a stupid tablet 🙈🙈😭 if you wanna see crazy go there—
courtneylexis (@CourtneyCrigler) November 29, 2013
Amid Some Fistfights, Walmart Sells 1.4M Tablets On Thanksgiving, iPad Mini A Top Seller
Walmart is already crowing about Black Friday and we're only a couple of hours into the actual day itself. That's because depressin...
With the success of SnapChat, Line and others, many have been wondering who will own the next big messaging service. Now, we're not saying it's necessarily the next big thing, but it is interesting to us that PingTune (formerly named Tuneit) has appeared with a service which slices off a fascinating niche of the messaging space with an app for music fans that want to send slices of music to each other in an easy and simple way. The startup, based in London's ‘Tech City' in the East, has also just raised £1m ($1.6m) worth of investment to do it. The seed investment comes from Rupert Hambro (former Chairman of Hambros Bank, currently Chairman of JO Hambro) and Dominic Perks (serial entrepreneur and active investor).
PingTune is an iPhone app which lets users search for music from sources like YouTube and SoundCloud, then simply message friends with that track. You can also choose a specific section of the tune or video to send, which, if you think about it, works quite well when you want to tell a friend something which just the chorus in a song is talking about. Clearly the flirting possibilities are endless.
CEO Henry Firth says “We saw that people were sharing music on social networks, but it can be clunky. Copying links between windows is hard work on a mobile phone. We wanted to make that process easier… so we built PingTune.” PingTune's 12-strong teams consists of staff formally with Yahoo, Spotify, Skype and Sony.
He says the business model will eventually be selling mp3s and other music-related purchases.
Note Spotify's partnership with Tango and Sony's campaign with Kik, speaks to this trend for music and messaging getting together. Messaging could well be the next wave we'll see in this space.
PingTune Raises $1.6M And Unleashes Messaging App Based Around Music
With the success of SnapChat, Line and others, many have been wondering who will own the next big messaging service. Now, we're not say...
Apple has issued a formal objection to the court-appointed lawyer assigned to monitor its compliance with the decision handed down in its e-book pricing fixing case back in July. The monitor was assigned by the DOJ back in October, and has apparently been charging Apple a very high price for his services – he made $138,432 in his first two weeks on the job, according to Apple's official filing on the matter.
Apple says that's the highest rate it's paid a lawyer in its history, which is saying a lot given the company's decidedly litigious streak. Apple's lawyers explained in the filing that they believe Bromwich is charging so much simply because he can, as Apple has no say in who is chosen for the position, and must pay for the court-appointed monitor as per the decision handed down by the DOJ in the antitrust price-fixing case. Apple also objected to a provision in the DOJ's ruling that would allow Bromwich to interview company personnel and report back to the court without Apple's own lawyers around to represent the company's interests.
The anti-trust case saw Apple charged with colluding with ebook publishers to artificially raise prices, and the DOJ handed down a decision that means Apple must have the court-appointed monitor, and is forbidden from having special arrangement with publishers around price restrictions, as well as so-called “favored nation” clauses (which essentially ties the pricing deals it works out with one publisher to the arrangements it holds with others) for four years.
Bromwich has served as an independent monitor before, in the oil and gas industry and with the Metropolitan Police Department for the District of Columbia, but if lawyer loving Apple is taking exception, there might be something to the claim that this rate is excessive by any standards.
Apple Not Impressed That Court-Appointed E-Book Compliance Monitor Made $138,432 In First Two Weeks
Apple has issued a formal objection to the court-appointed lawyer assigned to monitor its compliance with the decision handed down in its e...