Black friday of apple Amazon

Filed under: Business, Computer, electronics, laptop

Black friday of apple Amazon

Apple’s retail stores had their biggest sales day of all time, according to published reports.Hot-selling gadgets by Apple and Amazon appeared to drive tech sales on what, by all accounts, was a massive Black Friday.Ma Bell’s plan to buy T-Mobile may still technically be on life support. But make no mistake, AT&T’s stock looks pretty dead.AT&T (T, Fortune 500) announced last week that it is temporarily pulling its application for merger approval before the Federal Communications Commission.

9to5 Mac, an Apple-oriented blog, quoted an unnamed “source inside Apple Retail,” saying that the company had predicted sales four-times bigger than normal and topped that mark by 7 p.m.That move comes as the FCC and Department of Justice have both raised questions about the deal.iPad and Macbook Air sales were “exceptionally strong,” according to the source, who gave the blog a copy of an Apple Store inventory report.

Ma Bell also last week said it was prepared to take a $4 billion accounting charge in the fourth quarter to cover the required break-up fee payment to T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom if the merger falls apart.Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster counted sales in an Apple Store (just as he’s done every year since 2008), reporting that iPads and Macs were leaving the store at a rate of 14.8 and 10.1 per hour, respectively. That’s up from 8.8 and 8.2 per hour last year, according to his count.

If AT&T has to pull the plug on the deal — leaving that pretty T-Mobile spokesgirl looking for another corporate gentleman caller (paging Sprint (S, Fortune 500)!) — it may be tougher for Ma Bell to compete as effectively with its top rival Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500). Fortune’s Phillip Elmer-Dewitt noted his findings, as well as a separate Deutsche Bank analysis in which 75 percent of Apple Stores surveyed said they’d sold out of the iPhone 4S by the end of the day Friday.

But analysts said that as long as AT&T keeps paying that big, fat dividend, investors may not care. AT&T’s annual dividend is $1.72 a share. That works out to a yield of nearly 6.2%. Apple tends to avoid discounting its products, but this year offered some deals on Black Friday.Meanwhile, the Kindle Fire tablet — which may become the strongest challenger yet to Apple’s iPad — led the way for a big day for Amazon.Apple, Amazon lead big tech Black Friday.

Comments are closed.