As a leading e book readers resource, I frequently report on market news and market conditions. Since e readers like the Amazon Kindle sales and Barnes and Nobles Nook success have multiplied demand in general and specifically this Christmas season. It appears that overall online sales have also played a role fueling sales the tablet and e reader market.
According to ComScore, the last online sales push for Christmas broke records. From Nov 1 through Dec 26, online retail sales posted $35.3 billion. Last year, online retail sales came in at $30.6 billion or 15% lower than 2011′s holiday spending spree.
Christmas Sales Bump
Christmas day saw a big jump in sales of subscriptions for apps, music, (hulu plus) TV episodes, (netflix) movies and e book reader purchases. This surprising one-day trend has been increasing steadily for years with the introduction of e book readers. New product and app hungry owners of kindle fire, nook tablet, smart phones, and the rest of the e reader accessories and e reader product lines buy.
Excited, brand new tablet or e reader owners eagerly download new apps, new devices, ereader covers, and various products for their devices. Not to mention, older e reader owners are using gift cards to stock up on items and accessories in Amazon or Barnes & Noble online store.
The sudden jump in e reader sales during Christmas day could be linked to gift cards as well. Not just the buzz of receiving a cool new gift. There are a plethora of cheap ereaders either discounted by the two big e reader giants, Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook product line, or the subsequent lower selling Kobos, Sony, and other e reader makers.
New Mark For Online Sales and Subscriptions
Generally, the first fifty six days from November 1st to Christmas marks the holiday retail spending season. This last week ending with Christmas day, December 25th, saw $2.8 billion in online retail sales. During the same 2010 period, online sales hit $2.5 billion or 16% less than 2011 online consumer spending. The biggest jump in online sales from 2010 to 2011 was during “Black Friday”, November 25th. Online retail sales jumped 26% during Black Friday.
“Holiday e-commerce spending has remained strong throughout the season, and we have now reached a record $35 billion in U.S. online sales for the season-to-date,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “We can now say with certainty that the $1.25 billion spent on Cyber Monday will rank it as the heaviest online spending day of the season for the second consecutive year, but we should also note that it was accompanied by nine other billion dollar spending days this year.”
Dominant E Reader Sales
Total sales for digital content and subscriptions averaged 2.8 % of online or e-commerce sales. Christmas day took the same category accounting for less than 3% to 20 % of total online sales. Consistent with past years, comScore expects sales for this category of products to remain elevated throughout the entire week following Christmas Day.
News of Kindle’s best e book readers holiday season sales point toward higher e reader total sales numbers. Not too mention 2011′s comScore’s most valuable web properties top five total ranking by Amazon. As a sign of the e commerce online authority, Amazon’s total unique visitors ranked only behind web properties of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook. This is pretty significant and is possibly the related to the high sales through the holidays along with growing online purchases by American consumers.