Strong promotions help smartphone sales rise 2% YoY on Black Friday Week

US Smartphone sales during Black Friday Week 2024 (November 24-30) increased 2% YoY to reach 3.15 million units, as most channels improved or maintained similar smartphone deals YoY. In many channels, flagship devices from Apple, Google and Samsung had discounts of $1,000 or more. Google performed well with sales increasing 15% YoY during Black Friday week driven by the popularity of its four Pixel 9 series models. The Pixel 9 Pro XL accounted for about 50% of Google’s sales during the week. Apple’s sales rose 4% while those of Samsung remained relatively flat.

Overview of the Promotions Landscape
One theme among carriers and retailers this year was the extension of Black Friday deals. Many channels launched Black Friday promotions over a week in advance of the shopping holiday and continued them through Cyber Monday and beyond. This prolongation also helped boost smartphone sales during the week prior to Black Friday as compared to 2023. Sellers saw two key benefits from lengthening the Black Friday promotional period:

• Extending deals long enough could allow price-conscious consumers who are paid bi-weekly to participate twice within the period and ensure that the promotional period would fall on a pay day.
• While shopping online, consumers are hesitant to make too large of a purchase and often get shocked by a high total. Instead, they are more likely to make several smaller purchases, and the extended promo period gives them more opportunities to do so.

Along with extending the duration of the promo offers, several OEMs, cable providers and prepaid channels also improved the value of smartphone promotions, with channels like Xfinity offering up to $1,000 off several devices. This is a substantial YoY improvement, as during Black Friday 2023, Xfinity offered a maximum of $800 off devices. OEMs offered several strong deals as well –notably, Samsung’s $1,200 discount on the Galaxy Z Fold6 with trade-in ($800 off without trade-in). On top of the $1,200 discount with trade-in, Samsung offered an additional $300 off on select color variants of the device, giving consumers the ability to obtain the device for up to $1,500 off.

As for the Big 3 carriers, offers remained largely similar to Black Friday 2023. Several of the featured promos from Black Friday 2023 were renewed and updated for the 2024 model of the same device family. T-Mobile continued its primary offer from 2023 – Get 4 free iPhone 16s with 4 new lines for $25/line. Verizon retained its offer to give away multiple N-1 iPhone Plus devices with the purchase of myPlan lines. AT&T also continued one of its main deals from last year – Up to $1,000 off on the S24 Ultra with eligible trade-in. There were a few deal changes at the major carriers, such as AT&T offering $700 off on the iPhone 16 Plus this year compared to $830 off on the 15 Plus last year. However, overall device deals remained largely the same as in 2023. Counterpoint Research