Apple tops Dell in growth

Apple topped arch-rival Dell in growth on the busiest shopping day of the year -- Black Friday -- with a 111 percent increase in unique visitors over the prior year. That growth compares to a 29 percent increase for Dell, which brought the company 978,000 unique visitors on Black Friday and 1.26 million visitors on Cyber Monday. Of the estimated 32.5 million visitors logging onto virtual stores on Cyber Monday, most were purchasing items like Apple's iPod and Nintendo's Wii game console, according to Nielson Online as cited by Fortune. Apple received 643,000 unique visits from home users on Black Friday, followed by 1.35 million unique hits on Cyber Monday.

Interestingly the Cupertino-based company's site traffic saw a meager 5 percent unique visitor increase over the average traffic during the four weeks leading up to Cyber Monday, despite the company's 111 percent increase in unique visitors over a year ago.

eBay took home the title of the most visited online store on Cyber Monday with a whopping 11 million unique visitors, or roughly half of all home shoppers looking to online resources.

by MacNN Staff