Will BlackBerry Week Top Black Friday?

By Kris Eddy
November 17, 2009 | Comments (7)

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Christmas decorations appeared in stores the day after Halloween. The day after Thanksgiving, the holiday shopping season starts in earnest, and retailers hope the bucks will put them in the black.

With forecasters predicting overall declining holiday sales, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) plan to wrap up a big enticement a week before Black Friday. Each is offering a $100 gift certificate with purchase of a Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) BlackBerry phone and two-year service contract.

The Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal sees a trend: "Deals on electronics such as the Wal-Mart and Amazon Blackberry offers are jumping the gun with [Target (NYSE: TGT)] and [Best Buy (NYSE: BBY)] also joining in with deals on laptops, DVD players and high-definition TVs."

Is this competition a savvy move, or desperate ploy? Does it matter whether it works?

Let us know what you think about this item and the forecast for the holiday season in the comments box below.

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Kris Eddy owns no shares of the companies mentioned in this article. Amazon and Best Buy are Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendations. Wal-Mart and Best Buy are Inside Value recommendations. The Motley Fool owns shares of Best Buy. The Fool has a disclosure policy.

Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

  • Report this Comment On November 17, 2009, at 11:13 AM, miteycasey wrote:

    I think it's good business to get shoppers in the doors.

  • Report this Comment On November 17, 2009, at 12:08 PM, InfoThatHelp wrote:

    Amazon had been selling blackberrys for $0.01 for a long time, Buy1 Get1 blackberry free deals had been going on since 2007. Both campaigns had done zilch in continuing to boost waning blackberry sales. The new $100 coupon campaign is a desperate effort to unload the miles of shelves of unwanted blackberrys which will have to be scraped past this Christmas season, you don't see any other phonemaker having to be such dead giveaways.

    People like bargains, but they rarely send dead giveaways as gifts to their loved ones. This desperate $100 coupon campaign will not be successful. This Christmas is poised to be an all-Apple Christmas, nothing Rim can do to slow down Apple's steamrolling sales this Christmas, and beyond.

  • Report this Comment On November 17, 2009, at 12:50 PM, InfoThatHelp wrote:

    Highly unlikely for Walmart to sell more blackberrys. BOGOberry sales since 2007 and PennyBerry at Amazon for years had done little to slow down blackberry sales from dropping.

  • Report this Comment On November 17, 2009, at 1:01 PM, mhonarvar wrote:

    whats with all the Rim bashing...did Apple make a "hi im an iphone..and im a blackberry" commercial?

    your not looking at the bigger picture...they may be "selling" them for $0.01 but the phone carrier foots the real bill (as it makes a load of cash off the 2-3 year service plans)..Amazon gets a cut...and Rim gets theirs too..

  • Report this Comment On November 18, 2009, at 2:25 AM, InfoThatHelp wrote:

    I wouldn't recommend to anyone any $0.01 product that needs to be understood with the help of 'a big picture' as a Christmas gift, regardless of how insanely great you say it is.

  • Report this Comment On November 20, 2009, at 11:53 AM, teenkelly wrote:

    Personally i'm going to try to avoid the crowds this year and do most of my shopping online.

    I found a good article with tips on how to shop online this year on Black Friday & Cyber Monday...here is the link:

    http://www.covertsurfer.com/safeshopping.html

  • Report this Comment On November 20, 2009, at 11:56 AM, teenkelly wrote:

    Personally i'm going to try to avoid the crowds this year and do most of my shopping online.

    I found a good article with tips on how to shop online this year on Black Friday & Cyber Monday...here is the link:

    http://www.covertsurfer.com/safeshopping.html

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