Staples stores will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, but its customers can buy Black Friday deals online that day for store pickup Friday, its Black Friday ad shows. Google and Amazon are going head to head on streaming media sticks with Amazon showing a penny advantage: Amazon’s FireTV stick with Alexa will have a Black Friday price of $24.99 ($15 off) vs. $25 for the Google Chromecast ($10 off), and Amazon’s Fire 7 tablet will be cut by $20 to $29. A Dell 32-inch monitor is marked $90 off to $129. HP laptops will be Staples Black Friday deals, starting at $319.99 ($160 off) for a 14-inch model with an Intel Core i3 processor, 8 GB RAM and 1 TB hard drive. An HP holiday special starts even lower at $299 for a 14-incher with a Pentium Silver processor and half the storage. Stocking stuffers include a Lexar 16 GB USB flash drive at $6 off to $3.99 and a Logitech wireless mouse, $21 off to $8.99. An Epson wireless “small-in-one” printer will be Black Friday-priced at $39 ($40 off), it said.
Holiday consumer electronics sales this year are expected to rise 3 percent, with Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday weeks again delivering “the biggest gain,” said Stephen Baker, NPD vice president-industry analysis, in “Baker’s Dozen” holiday preview. Overall holiday CE performance again will be “at the mercy” of PCs and TVs, which for the past five years have generated 37 percent of the category’s dollar sales, said Baker. Superior screen quality is the “it” feature this holiday, and will drive “more value, across more products, across more use cases than ever before,” he said. Other predictions: (1) Expect screen sizes 65 inches and larger to be the “hottest segment” in the TV market in 2018; (2) “Cords are a thing of the past,” as the holiday popularity of wireless charging, Bluetooth sound and wireless security will attest.
Google is encouraging clients to push holiday spending earlier “as Black Friday trends spill into October,” said Cowen & Co. analyst John Blackledge in an investor note Friday. Some Google clients began testing new formats and platforms in September, Blackledge said. The analyst's sources expect less testing by clients during Q4, which would lead them back to Google Search for the proven return on investment, he said. Cowen maintained its “outperform” rating on Google parent company Alphabet.