Black Friday 2013 has come and gone and as shoppers lick their wounds and take stock of their super savings gift items, the question many may be asking is, which item did the best this year? According to many noteworthy analysts, the answer is simple - the iPad.
Apple analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray, who has a long history of predicting all things Apple, took a trip to the Mall of America in Bloomington Minn. over the weekend to check out some of the activity at the Apple Store. InformationWeek, which reported his data, says that the traffic at the store was up nine percent compared to last year. This is due in large part to the fact that the company's new iPad Mini with Retina Display was doing better than expected. Based on Munster's observations, the iPad may sell 24.5 million units during the holiday quarter alone.
Munster's observations were echoed by Trip Chowdry, an analyst from Global Equities Research who visited nine different Apple stores over the weekend as well as five Target stores. He claims to have spoken with at least 300 people about their holiday purchases and discovered that the 128GB version of the iPad Air and iPad Mini with Retina Display were the most popular devices at Apple stores. Prices for those tablets are $799 and $699 respectively. Apple is not known for offering big discounts on its items, even for Black Friday.
Walmart claims to have sold 1.4 million tablets between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Black Friday, making the 16GB iPad Mini its most popular purchase.
In addition to the iPad being a huge success for Apple this holiday season already, the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C didn't do poorly in sales either with many of the numbers of iPhone sales coming in just shy of the iPad's sales. For a more complete analysis of Apple's Black Friday performance, you can find it HERE via InformationWeek.
