It's more or less general knowledge at this point that anything with that iconic Apple (News - Alert) logo on it will sell like hotcakes, largely because Apple just has that much brand power. Indeed, this past Thanksgiving demonstrated the company's hold on the consumer electronics market, as well as its effect on consumers themselves.
First of all, an estimated 10 percent of online shopping traffic was conducted over the Thanksgiving holiday on iPads, while the iPhone accounted for 8.7 percent of holiday sales traffic. Compared to the 5.5 percent of holiday sales traffic generated by all devices running Android (News - Alert), it just goes to show the strength of Apple's mobile presence. Meanwhile, 88.3 percent of all sales made on a tablet device were made from — you guessed it — an iPad.
Barnes & Noble's Nook and Amazon Kindle devices made up 3.1 and 2.4 percent of sales, respectively.
On the in-store front, Apple also came out ahead of competitors over Thanksgiving weekend — at least at the Mall of America. According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who stationed teams at both the Apple and Microsoft (News - Alert) stores, Microsoft's retail location in the mall received 47 percent fewer visitors than the Apple Store. Furthermore, customers at the Apple Store purchased an average 17.2 items per hour, compared to only 3.5 items per hour at the Microsoft store.
Munster's teams also noted that the Apple Store sold 11 iPads per hour, while the Microsoft store didn't sell a single Surface tablet.
Indeed, the iPad continues to be the king of the tablet world and there are multiple ways to confirm it. For example, in September, a study conducted by Onswipe, a digital publishing tool maker, found that 98.1 percent of 29.5 million unique impressions taken from a sample size of 1,200 sites in the period of a week used an iPad.
However, the situation doesn't seem to be as bright for the recently launched iPad Mini, which hasn't been performing as well as many had predicted so far.
Apple, meanwhile, is aiming to continue its dominance in consumer electronics in the form of an eBay (News - Alert) outlet for refurbished products that was launched a month ago. So far, what is being treated as a test run by Apple has performed successfully.
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Edited by Rachel Ramsey