Roughly 47% of the U.S. adult population, or 116 million Americans, will buy some sort of technology during the Black Friday week, according to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). That’s a 10% jump from 2016.
CTA marks Black Friday week as the Monday before Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday (Nov. 21-28), with TVs, laptops, smartphones, gaming consoles, headphones, tablets, accessories, disc players, cameras and wearables making up the top 10 most-wanted tech items for holiday shoppers.
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“By all accounts, the 2016 Black Friday week looks like it will be a record breaker for tech,” said Shawn DuBravac, chief economist for CTA, in a statement. “Even with delayed promotions from retailers and manufacturers, and signs of pre-election uncertainty, we expect consumer enthusiasm for technology purchases during the holidays to be higher than ever.
“Outside of the tech perennials — TVs, laptops, smartphones — expect to see front-page circular deals from a variety of retailers on emerging products including drones, virtual reality and digital assistant devices such as the Amazon Echo or Google Home. On average, half of the unit volume of newer, emerging categories sells in the fourth quarter alone — a promising indicator for these new and innovative products.”
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For the entire holiday shopping season, CTA expects 1.2 million drones, 700,000 virtual reality headsets, and 4.5 million 4K Ultra High-Def (UHD) TVs to be sold.
The CTA is also anticipating that — tech shopping or not — 114 million shoppers will head online for their holiday gifts.
