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85% Of Black Friday Week Shoppers Plan To Buy Tech

It looks like Black Friday Week will be a good time for the tech industry.

New estimates from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) project that 85% of consumers plan to buy tech from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday.

Nearly a third of those planning to shop during the holiday season say they wait all year for this time frame to buy big-ticket tech items like smartphones and TVs.

Smartphones and TVs tied for the top item consumers plan to purchase, followed by portable Bluetooth speakers, video game consoles and laptops, digital media streaming devices and smartwatches.

Both online and in-store purchases are expected to be embraced, with 98% of consumers shopping at brick-and-mortar mass merchants and 93% shopping online.

“The lines are blurring between what days consumers will shop, and how they'll shop during the 2018 Black Friday shopping week," stated Lesley Rohrbaugh, director of market research at CTA. "There's no longer a clear winner in terms of the most popular shopping day or retail channel.”

For the entire holiday shopping season, from October through December, CTA is projecting sales of various device, including:

  • Smart speakers, such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, projected to sell 22 million units, an increase of 44% from a year ago
  • Smartwatches are projected to sell more than 7 million devices, an annual increase of 26%
  • Wireless earbuds projected to sell 5 million devices, a 60% increase from last year

The shopping cars are warming up.

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