Black Friday Online Sales Top $1 Billion For The First Time - comScore

 

Black Friday retail sales online this year topped US$ 1 billion for the first time ever as more consumers chose to use the Internet for their early holiday shopping, comScore reported on Sunday.

Online sales jumped 26 % on Black Friday to US$ 1.04 billion from sales of US$ 816 million on the same day last year, according to the data analyst company.

Amazon.com was the most-visited retail website on Black Friday, and it also posted the highest year-over-year visitor growth rate among the top five retailers. Wal-Mart's website was second, followed by Best Buy, Target and Apple.

Digital content and subscriptions, including e-books, digital music and video, was the fastest-growing retail category online, with sales up 29 % versus Black Friday last year.

2012 Holiday Season To Date vs. Corresponding Days* in 2011 Non-Travel (Retail) Spending Excludes Auctions and Large Corporate Purchases Total U.S. – Home & Work Locations	Millions ($)	Millions ($)	Percent Change
	2011	2012
November (1 – 23)	$11,832	$13,726	16%
Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 22)	$479	$633	32%
Black Friday (Nov. 23)	$816	$1,042	26%

Cyber Monday Outlook

It's unclear whether the strong Black Friday sales online will weaken growth on Cyber Monday, which has been the biggest e-commerce day in the United States in recent years.

"Cyber Monday will be a big day, but not as much of a big day as it has been in the past," - Mia Shernoff, executive vice president for Chase Paymentech, a payment-processing unit of J.P. Morgan Chase

"Faster broadband Internet connections in the office used to drive this. But now many consumers have faster connections at home and smart phones and tablets - they don't have to wait." - ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni

More than 129 million Americans plan to shop online on Cyber Monday, up from almost 123 million on the same day last year, according to a survey conducted in recent days for the National Retail Federation. The group also expects 85 % of retailers to have a special promotion for Cyber Monday.

Google stop new orders for 16GB Nexus 7 tablet computer

 

After it's unveiling on June 27, 2012 for release by mid-July at Google I/O, an overwhelming response from the tech enthusiasts have forced Google to stop receiving new orders for 16GB Nexus 7 device from it's Play Store in the UK and US. Orders that were made in the period up to the end of last week are due to be fulfilled, but a shortage of stock now means a hiatus in sales.

While the 8GB model, which costs £159, is shown as "in stock" and being delivered in 3-5 business days, the 16GB version only offers an option to "sign up to be notified by email" when it becomes available. The low cost of the Nexus 7 puts it in direct competition with the Kindle Fire, which share similar price tags. The low price of the Nexus 7 is also in comparison to higher-end tablets rivals such as the Apple iPad.

The Nexus 7 marks Google's first step into the tablet business. The device is powered by Asus and latest version of Android, 4.1, codenamed Jelly Bean OS. the 8GB version is being sold almost at cost ($199 compared to the build cost of $157), according to estimates by IHS iSuppli.

Although the 8GB Nexus 7 is being sold only on the Play Store rather than physical retailers, the online buyers have surprised Google by preferring the 16GB model rather than the half storage sized unit. The sheer size of today's media and the Nexus' 7 inch screen means buyers opted to choose the bigger storage because it's storage can't be upgraded.

Initial shipments of Nexus 7 is reserved to the US, Canada, UK, Republic of Ireland and Australia.

Specs:

• 7-inch LED backlit 1280x800@60Hz 18-bit pixel IPS display (Hydis HV070WX2) fused to Corning scratch-resistant glass
• 1.3 GHz Quad-core (plus one "companion" core) Nvidia Tegra 3 processor with a 12-core graphics chip (T30L - 4 x Cortex A9 SoC)
• 1 GB DDR3 RAM (Hynix HTC2G83CFR)
• NFC (NXP 65N04)
• Wi-Fi b/g/n with Bluetooth 4.0 (Broadcom BCM4330 paired with AzureWave AW-NH665)
• Gyroscope and accelerometer (Invensense MPU-6050), magnetometer
• GPS (Broadcom BCM4751)
• Front-facing 1.2 MP camera (Aptina MI 1040)
• Rechargeable 4325 mAh, 16 Wh Li-ion non-removable battery

Microsoft announces Surface tablet to rival iPad

After a 2 year domination of the tablet computers market by the Apple iPad which sold 67.1 million units as of 31 March 2012, it appears that Microsoft want a piece of the tablet market action that also include the Touchpad, Blackberry and other Android tablets.

At it's LA event on Monday, Microsoft showed off their latest result of excellent engineering technology that could probably be bad news for desktop computer and laptops manufacturers, Microsoft Surface.

Surface with Type Cover - 2mm more thicker than Touch cover, making the keyboard in total 5mm thick

Firstly, it's made of magnesium-based VaporMg chassis material which is as rigid and also smooth to touch. The Surface tablet computers shown are powered by Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge chips running Windows 8, and another Surface powered by an ARM chipset and Windows RT.

The Windows RT version is just 9.3mm thin, weighs 1.5lbs, includes a built-in kickstand. It will ship in 32GB or 64GB versions, complete with a 10.6-inch ClearType HD 16:9 display.



Microsoft Surface's Intel-based tablet will run Windows 8 Pro, with a thickness of 13.5mm, a weight of 1.9lbs including USB 3.0 support. This version will also include magnesium casing and a built-in kickstand, but will ship with either 64GB or 128GB storage.

Additionally, the Intel version will include additional digital ink support through a pen that magnetizes to the body of the tablet, and a 10.6-inch covered in Gorilla Glass 2 ClearType Full HD display. Both of Microsoft's Surface tablets feature optional Touch Cover that will contain an integrated multi-touch keyboard and trackpad or Type Cover that is a thicker full tactile keyboard.

For suggested retail pricing, Microsoft will announce it closer to availability and is expected to be competitive with a comparable ARM tablet or Intel Ultrabook notebooks PC. Hopefully with it's lightness and powerful processor capability it'll be affordable for the students in college and to the normal tech enthusiast. The Windows RT PC will be available in October, with the Windows 8 Pro model to ship about three months later.

Akamai: South Korea still have the fastest internet connection in the world

Each quarter, Akamai publishes a "State of the Internet" report that includes data gathered from attack traffic, broadband adoption, mobile connectivity and other relevant topics concerning the Internet and its usage, as well as trends seen in this data over time.

According to the network solutions provider, South Korea is putting other countries to shame with average fiber and broadband internet access speeds of about 16Mbps. By comparison, The U.S offers an average connection speeds of 5.8Mbps, putting it behind a host of country's internet service providers including Romania, Japan and also Switzerland.

Akamai also revealed that cities in the Asia Pacific region are far more likely to have high speed internet, with 61 cities in Japan featured in the list of fastest connections for cities.

The lighter the color, the faster the internet connection speed.

Despite that, only a minority of people have access to the highest speeds. Akamai found that just 27% of all connections came from speeds of 5Mbps or higher. On the mobile-connections side, it saw a spread between 163 kilobits per second and 5Mbps, and found that the vast majority of mobile connections average speeds of 1Mbps.

Other report details include:

• On a year-over-year basis, average connection speeds in Asia increased 13 percent while Internet users in Oceania have witnessed a 132 percent increase.
• Average peak connection speeds in Africa were 55 percent faster than four years ago while users in South America have experienced a 238 percent increase
• Since 2008, South America has seen a 558 percent increase in high broadband adoption, yet still ranks just above Africa in total high broadband penetration.
• Narrowband adoption continued to decline globally with all regions reporting similar percentage declines (64-78 percent).

Any .com Domain Names Are Now Seizable

After the take down of sports-bet site Bodog.com by the U.S authorities last week, every domain names owner on the internet was shocked because the domain name was registered with a Canadian domain name registrar, DomainClip thus putting it beyond the reach of the U.S. government.

Knowing that, the feds went directly to VeriSign, a U.S.-based internet backbone company that own the contract to manage the coveted .com and other generic top-level domain names on the internet.


Bodog.com was targeted because federal law generally makes it illegal to offer online sports wagering and to payoff online bets in the United States, even though online gambling isn’t illegal globally.

EasyDNS, an internet infrastructure company, publicly protested that the “ramifications of this are no less than chilling and every single organization branded or operating under .com, .net, .org, .biz etc. needs to ask themselves about their vulnerability to the whims of U.S. federal and state lawmakers.”


VeriSign, said they are just complying with U.S. law.

“VeriSign responds to lawful court orders subject to its technical capabilities. When law enforcement presents us with such lawful orders impacting domain names within our registries, we respond within our technical capabilities.”

VeriSign often complies with U.S. court orders by redirecting the DNS (Domain Name System) of domain names to a U.S. government IP address that informs online visitors that the site has been seized like ninjavideo.net

“Beyond that, further questions should be directed to the appropriate U.S. federal government agency responsible for the domain name seizure,” the company said.

Despite that, Bodog is now operating using the .eu domain name. A move that is becoming more popular towards other similar themed websites around. Similarly, The Pirate Bay have moved their .org to a .se domain register.

Nokia Lumia 900 CES Preview

Nokia and Windows Phone continue to surge towards rejoining the smartphone elite fleet with their third, latest smartphone; Lumia 900, which has 4G on board for the US market.

The success of the Windows Phone platform is good for the smart phone industry, offering a clear way out from the Android or Apple monopoly for the users. It should be the Nokia's biggest smartphone launch in the country to date. According to one report, Nokia, Microsoft and AT&T will spend roughly $100 million marketing the phone.

Lumia 900, is a smartphone that comes with a 4.3-inch AMLOED display with Cornering Gorilla Glass and Nokia ClearBlack technology. 16GB of internal flash storage, 512MB of RAM, and a single-core 1.4GHz Scorpion CPU mounted on the Qualcomm’s APQ8055 Snapdragon chipset.

Nokia Lumia 900 also have 8MP camera with autofocus, dual LED flash and Carl Zeiss’ lenses. With support for HD 720p video recording and a resolution of 3264×2448 pixels Lumia 900′s optic unit is almost everything you’d want from a phone camera.

It is also pre-loaded with Microsoft’s latest mobile OS, Windows Phone 7.5.


When it comes to connectivity, the high-end smart phone of the Nokia Lumia line-up comes with HSDPA (21 Mbps) and HSUPA (5.76 Mbps), WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v2.1, microUSB v2.0, NFC chip and, of course, 4G LTE support.

According to a leaked roadmap published at BGR, the Lumia 900 will launch on March 18, for $100 with a two-year contract.

LG to unveil 55-inch OLED TV at CES

Girl not included

Every 10-13 January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is the place to be for consumer electronics companies to unveil their upcoming products for the year. This year LG Electronics plans to show the world's largest OLED TV - a 55-inch display that's just 4 mm thin and weighs a mere 7.5 kg.

The new High Definition Television (HDTV) uses advanced OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) technology with "4-Color Pixels and Color Refiner" features that generate natural, accurate colors without jaggies and other imperfections. With the 4-Color Pixels feature, each pixel uses a set of four colors - red, green, blue and white - which expands on the common RGB (red, green, blue) setup.

According to LG, the TV is also 1,000 times faster than the normal LED / LCD tv displays.



The advantages of an OLED television are:

• Light weight & flexible plastic substrates
• Wider viewing angles & improved brightness
• Better power efficiency
• Faster response time

The Korean consumer electronics manufacturer will also unveil its 84-inch Ultra Definition set, which has 8 million pixels at CES.