Black Friday's Big Winner - NETBOOKS

For Black Friday madness, there will always be winners and losers — the ones who got what they wanted, and the ones who didn’t do so well. Today at MacPCWiz we take a look at the big winners for Black Friday shopping madness. Netbooks, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and yes, Twitter — they all were big winners on the biggest shopping day of the year.

Amazon

According to digital marketing analysts comScore, traffic on Amazon.com rose 28% from last year on the same shopping day. People spent 11% more than Black Friday 2008 — this year’s total Black Friday online spending came to $595 million dollars, up from last year’s $534 million.

This consolidates the trend that more and more people are relying on the online marketplace than on brick-and-mortar businesses. Running a close 2nd was Wal-Mart‘s online store, traffic up by 22% from Black Friday last year.

Netbooks…

ok, Macs too

Although Macs occupied 3 of the top 4 “Most wished For” computers at Amazon, the top spot belonged to an ASUS netbook. What does that tell us? If people were not wishing for a Mac, they wanted a netbook instead. Indeed 5 of the top 8 “Most wished For” computers were netbooks.

ASUS Eee PC Seashell - Most Wished For

The next question here would be — “Were people buying netbooks this Black Friday?” As a matter of fact, they did. 6 of the top 8 sellers in Amazon’s computers and accessories category were netbooks. Leading the way were Asian suppliers like ASUS, Acer, and Toshiba. And by way of these…

Microsoft and Intel

…also had a good day. Windows 7 Starter-loaded netbooks were being bought, and Google monitored a spike in Windows 7-related searches. Even with all the negative publicity about Windows 7 Starter edition being a huge pain, people still went for those over WindowsXP-based netbooks.

Windows 7 Starter Edition in Netbooks

Intel, with much of their Atom processors in the hearts of these tiny systems, Intel should feel a small surge from this on their next financial report. Margins are pretty small on these small Atom processors, but the quantity of netbooks sold just made them a “not bad at all” profit.

Twitter

Twitter, on the other hand, was the big e-tailing tool of the holiday. Read here:

Twitter may be giving a similar boost to some big names in retail. The New York Times scoured the microblogger for evidence of businesses engaging with customers and found plenty. For example, Gap, J.C. Penney, and several others posted offers directly to their Twitter feeds.J.C. Penney, for example, was pitching multiple deals on Black Friday via its Twitter feed. Sales began at 4 a.m. local time,  with a “wake-up call” tweet linking to a discount on winter coats.

Call it more evidence that Twitter is greasing the skids of e-commerce as never before. And I do mean more evidence. Amazon was using the microblogger to move products last year. But as the Times pointed out in its story, 2009 is the first holiday shopping season when retailers are actively turning to Twitter to reach customers. “Twitter Christmas” has entered the popular lexicon as a result.

Read the full article at Fool.com.

Trends

With netbooks, most people probably are satisfied that they are getting what they paid for — a small screen, small storage space, no optical drive (hence our recommendation for external DVD drives as data archiving solutions), so-so processing and graphics power — all for an amount under $500USD. If this trend goes on, netbooks may create a whole shift in the hardware industry, making external accessories (such as the DIGISTOR USB DVD burner) that much more viable.

Meanwhile, online retailing continues to take a boost as shopping from the comfort of your home is constantly growing in appeal. More and more, e-tailing sites like Amazon, and the microblogging site Twitter will find more traffic going their way as the holidays progress.