While I avoided the lines at 4:00 in the morning, I couldn’t resist stopping by the local King of Prussia Mall later in the day yesterday to see how Black Friday was shaping up. Frankly, the mall wasn’t as crowded as I expected it to be, but there were still more than a few folks in the Sony Style store, and the Apple Store could have used traffic cops to keep the hordes at bay. Of the Sony products available, one customer rep I spoke to said the laptops were getting the most attention, specifically the VAIO NW and recently launched VAIO CW series. I asked about the Sony Reader products and was told they were being more heavily promoted at a kiosk elsewhere in the mall. Blu-ray players? Not doing so great, unlike last year. Despite the discounted price, this stack of Sony BDP-S360 players didn’t get one interested passerby in the time I was there.
Meanwhile at the Apple Store, it was difficult to move a foot without running into another body. According to the employee I spoke to, the hottest sellers of the day were the Nano and the iPod touch. I also got a quick glimpse of the new mobile payment system in action. Actually, I overheard one clerk asking another where to find the cash drawer he’d just opened with his iPod, so possibly there are still a few kinks being worked out. However, everyone seemed happy with their gadget shopping experience, and I even convinced a guy behind the roped off area to give me a close-up shot of the iPod he was using to ring up orders. Unfortunately, the shot’s blurry because I didn’t have time to adjust my camera settings before I had to move on.
More shopping photos below. Anyone else have stories of braving the stores yesterday?
I’d have some shots for you, but I’ve been scolded/stopped from taking pics in nearly every German store I’ve entered. Similar experience in Dublin last year. I thought WE were the anal and litigous. Hm.
Anyway, no luck finding the Nokia N900, but I did fonfle a HTC HD2 and GSM Pre. Also snuck some phone shots of a T-Mobile IPTV DVR/STB.
PS When I purchased my Mophie Juicepack before heading over, I saw the new payment hardware at Apple. Looks like a iPod Touch in a beefy, credit card swiping enclosure.
Was looking for some good LCD deals online yesterday, but browsing via iPhone was too tedious. Setlled on a meager $20ish discount on a Time Capsule to avoid your netbook fate.
Dave pick me up one of those Blu-ray players next time you’re in the Sony store.
Was going to hit up Target at 5:00am for a TomTom 340S but found the same deal at Amazon for $10 more the night before. Now it looks like I could have bought the 335S off TomTom’s site for only $119 this weekend, which would be the best deal of all. Oh well.
Only shopping we did was local–a Radio Shack was very crowded (needed a mini-firewire cable), an Avenue store was mostly empty, a K-Mart was so-so busy. Never made it to Best Buy as I’d planned.
The one thing I was really looking for was a deal on an Acer Aspire AS1410 or 1810tz, but I’m not seeing any.
I was at the kop mall around 2 and there was still a huge line going to the right from the apple store, about 100 people deep. I can only imagine what it was like 8 hours earlier. The apple crew was real nice on friday, they let me cut the line so I could snap a pic of my friend’s imenorah app at the bottom of the “app holiday tree” just inside the store.
Nice Website … Oh also digged!
I have a lot of black friday this year will be this or not.