Fighting the trend, Android tablet manufacturers had a good Black Friday

Despite all of the big crowds, fights, and the seemingly non-stop loop of commercials, sales of consumer electronics declined 5.6% on Black Friday according to the NPD Group. The larger than expected drop comes after a 4% decline last year. 58% of Black Friday sales receipts came from PC's, Android tablets and television sets. Part of the problem was that lower sales prices did not generate the necessary new sales to make up for the price tag cut. For example, flat screen television sales rose 4% on volume, but dropped 6% on revenue thanks to the drop in the average sales price to $333 from $367 last year.

It was a good Black Friday for manufacturers of Android flavored tablets. Android tablets increased volume sales by a whopping 177%, but because prices were down on average to $151 from $219, revenue rose 91%. Some of those sales came at the expense of notebook computers. These smaller computer models showed a 10% decline in sales. Apple branded models were flat while Windows powered notebooks dropped 10%. A vast majority of notebook sales, 89%, were Windows 8 devices and fetched an average selling price of  $368. Android tablets had a huge price advantage over the computers in this area on Black Friday.

Cyber Monday did better with record online sales of $1.46 billion on the Monday following Black Friday. Free shipping was a big driver of online sales and half of all transactions included it, which led to additional orders being placed by shoppers.

source: PCMag