In the United States, Thanksgiving weekend sales are closely studied to predict consumer spending for the upcoming holiday season. This year, NPD Group reported that the share of shoppers for brick-and-mortar increased by about 6 percent while online shoppers’ share grew by 44 percent. Further, according to IBM’s Coremetrics, Cyber Monday online sales already exceeded this year’s Black Friday by 31%.
Similarly, over the Thanksgiving weekend, Flurry measured strong growth for new smartphone devices and application downloads. Note that because the mobile device and application download markets continue to grow at accelerating rates, we used a week-over-week vs. year-over-year comparison.
The chart below shows the number of new devices detected by more than 55,000 applications in the market which include Flurry Analytics. The bulk of growth is driven by Apple iOS devices and a number of recent break-out Android devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S, Motorola Droid 2 and LG Optimus S. Flurry detects a new, unique device the first time an application which includes Flurry Analytics is launched on that device.
Reviewing the chart above, new devices detected on Black Friday jumped by 57% over the previous week’s Friday. Total new device growth for the holiday weekend, compared to the same four-day period from the prior week, was 31%. Interestingly, this surge demonstrates that consumers appear to be buying and activating smartphones early in the season for personal use. This early indicator suggests that strong spending on smartphones as gifts throughout the season should continue.
App consumption over Thanksgiving weekend also showed solid growth. However, as the chart below shows, downloads on Thanksgiving Day led all days of the holiday weekend with 54%, versus new handset growth which led on Black Friday. At 39% growth, Black Friday applications were also strong. Total week-over-week download growth was 25%.
Christmas is historically the strongest season of app downloads to mobile phones. As consumers receive new handsets, they immediately personalize their handsets with new content. With early growth indicators for both handset and download growth, Flurry predicts Holiday 2010 will deliver another record-breaking season for application consumption and mobile device sales.