Black Friday's Big Winners

Recs

6

Predictions of retail holiday hell didn't exactly come true on Black Friday. Not online, anyway. Researchers instead found double-digit year-over-year gains in Web shopping.

Estimates varied little. PriceGrabber.com, for example, reported an 11% increase in traffic at retail sites while Nielsen Online says that its Holiday eShopping Index counted 31.7 million unique visitors to online stores, a 10% gain.

Here's a list of the 10 most popular products with e-shoppers on Black Friday, as identified by PriceGrabber:

Rank

Product

Company

1

Nintendo Wii console

Nintendo

2

Ugg Australia "classic short" boot

Deckers Outdoor (Nasdaq: DECK)

3

Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray disc player

Sony (NYSE: SNE)

4

Samsung LN52A650 52-inch LCD TV

Samsung

5

Nintendo Wii Fit

Nintendo

6

Panasonic TH-42PX80U 42-inch plasma TV

Panasonic (NYSE: PC)

7

Sennheiser HD 555 headphones

Sennheiser (private co.)

8

Canon EOS Rebel XSi Black SLR digital camera kit

Canon (NYSE: CAJ)

9

Acer Aspire One AOA110-1295 notebook PC

Acer

10

Canon PowerShot A590 IS black digital camera

Canon

Sources: PriceGrabber.com.

Geeks got game
Interestingly, only Canon and Stock Advisor selection Nintendo placed two products in the top 10. Cameras and game consoles are this year's Cabbage Patch Kids and Beanie Babies, apparently.

At least for one day, anyway. At Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), the Oprah-backed Kindle leads all electronics sellers, followed by two of Garmin's (Nasdaq: GRMN) GPS systems. Sony's Blu-ray player -- the same one PriceGrabber ranked third -- is fourth at Amazon. Nintendo's Wii Fit, meanwhile, ranked tenth in video games. Its DS Lite Limited Edition was first.

Investors are still correct to be skeptical of most retailers. But not those who cater to game and gadget geeks. If Black Friday is any indicator, demand for virtual tennis and digitally enhanced air guitar is as big as it's ever been.

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Amazon, Garmin, and Nintendo are Stock Advisor selections. Garmin is also a Global Gains pick. Try either of these Foolish services free for 30 days. There's no obligation to subscribe.

Fool contributor Tim Beyers didn't own shares in any of the companies mentioned in this article at the time of publication. The Motley Fool's disclosure policy is that rare black swan among disclosure policies.

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11/6/2009 4:03 PM
CAJ $37.82 Up +0.33 +0.88%
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SNE $28.87 Up +0.14 +0.49%
Sony Corp (ADR) CAPS Rating: **
AMZN $126.20 Up +5.59 +4.63%
Amazon.com, Inc. CAPS Rating: **
DECK $93.17 Down -0.26 -0.28%
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GRMN $28.43 Up +0.29 +1.03%
Garmin Ltd. CAPS Rating: ***

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