Smartphones are becoming more and more a part of our everyday lives. In fact, some people, when asked if there was one thing they could live without, say their phone. Over the years, cell phones got smaller and smaller.

Now, instead of carrying around a bulky brick that can only make phone calls and do a few other things, we can have something immensely more power, smaller, and with a wider range of functions.

Being that we have mobile Internet access, it seems that a lot of people used their phone to help with holiday shopping in 2011, a trend that’s likely to rise, especially with the likes of Amazon’s price checker app that allows you to scan an item in stores and see if it’s cheaper online.

Via Mashable:

“Research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that about half of consumers (52%) used their phones in stores during the holidays. Of this group, about 38% said they called friends for advice and 24% said they looked up product reviews. Meanwhile, about 25% looked up product prices online to see if they could find a cheaper price at other retailers.”

“The study was conducted among 1,000 U.S. adults over the age of 18 who were asked questions about how they shopped 30 days before and after Christmas.”

Also in the report, they found that those between the ages of 18 and 49 are more likely to use their phones for online product reviews than those over the age of 50 and minorities are more likely to look up online product reviews than caucasians.

Do you use your phone to look up prices and reviews?

52% Of People Used Their Phone To Help With Holiday Shopping is a post from: The Inquisitr

Video game sales went down in 2011 and also were down in December compared to the year prior. The gaming industry still made a good amount of money with consumers still spending Billions of dollars.

While retail video game sales went down, the findings weren’t the same with purchases of digital games, add-on content, mobile and social games as well as rentals and subscriptions.

“Total consumer spending on video games at retailers dropped 8% in 2011, to $17 million from last year’s total of $18.4 billion.”

“However, digital sales of games and add-on digital content, along with spending on mobile and social games, rentals and subscriptions rose 7% to $7.24 billion in 2011, according to data from market research firm The NPD Group. ” The increase in these areas partially offset the decline in new physical retail sales of content in 2011,” says NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier.”

With retail video game sales still doing pretty good, it’s still a decent hit to companies, especially those who rely off of sales of a few titles while further developing new games that can take a lot of work and an extended period of time to finish.

One would think that December would result in far more retail sales than any other time of the year, but as it turns out, sales dropped in the month of December. Compared to the year prior, sales of games, game accessories, and game systems dropped a whopping 21% compared to December of 2010.

Out of all the game systems, the only one’s who saw an increase in December were Nintendo’s 3Ds and DS.

Retail Video Games Sales Dropped In 2011, Digital Content To Blame is a post from: The Inquisitr

During the holidays, people tend to flock to retail stores more than at any other time during the year. Johnny needs this toy, Sarah needs this dress, and so on. However, that didn’t appear to be the case during December.

Retail sales increased just 0.1 percent which barely even registers on the scale. This was the slowest increase in 7 months and completely goes against the general thought that shopping during the holidays tends to be at it’s absolute highest, record breaking even.

It seems though that it wasn’t necessarily people buying less, just that more people bought everything they needed ahead of time in November. For a lot of us, myself included, I’m lucky to buy pretty much anything ahead of time. It’s usually a couple weeks before.

As far as shopping at electronics and appliance stores, that dropped 3.9 percent which is likely due to the fact that you can easily be the latest gadget, PC, laptop, and more, online. Why spend a couple hours going out when you can stay at home and order there? Sure, you can’t personally test out the product then, but with all the video reviews and written reviews of products, you can be much more confident with your purchase.

Food and beverage sales dropped 0.2 percent and sales at gas stations dropped 1.6 percent which could be from not as many people out shopping and the likes of more fuel efficient cars out on the road.

The only real increase for retail in December was auto sales and part purchases which increased by 1.5 percent.

Retail Sales Barely Rise Over The Holidays is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Oscar de la Renta retail location located on New York’s Madison Avenue is the most expensive fashion store in the country according to a recent study of various fashionista chains.

Bundle.com compiled data from American’s high-end retail spaces and found that the average customer spends $3,217 per visit, with customers purchasing tailored dresses that start at $1,890 and can easily climb to $10,690.

The Oscar de la Renta store in New York City isn’t alone, three of the top five most expensive fashion stores are located in the Big Apple.

Here’s Bundle’s list of the top 10 most expensive retail stores in America:

Bundle also points out that various other top 25 locations are located in New York City including Vera Wang, Alexander McQueen and Tom Ford among others. 

In the meantime I’ll keep shopping off the discount rack at Banana Express.

Meet Oscar de la Renta, America’s Most Expensive Fashion Store is a post from: The Inquisitr

We all know that this is going to spread like wildfire throughout the tech blogosphere within the next couple of hours and provide us all with a weekend full of link bait headlines, but Gizmodo has been lucky enough to gotten their hands on a PowerPoint deck of plans for the Microsoft store. Yes folks we can now see just what the Monster from Redmond has up its sleeve in its plans for a retail battle with Apple. The presentation is from Lippicott, a design and brand strategy consulting firm, and in the words of Gizmodo – “it’s going to make the Apple Store look downright boring”.

Apparently the stores will include things like a massive wrap around screen – Digital Media Wall – along with lots of Surface stuff mixed in with staging areas for Windows 7 and Windows Media Center.
You can see the complete presentation deck over at Gizmodo but here’s a taste of what you will see of the 47 pictures.

hat tip to Gizmodo

Ah the perfect weekend link bait: Leaked Microsoft store pics is a post from: The Inquisitr

The one thing that you’ve always been able to say about Apple is that the retail experience is one of the major cornerstones of its business and like everything else it does it very well. The word is that Microsoft; for whatever reasons, is headed down, once more, that retail store road. Unlike Apple though, I sincerely doubt that Microsoft will be able to pull off the same kind of style or retail experience that Apple does.

This seems to be Mary Jo Foley’s feeling on the idea as well

I have to admit I’m doubtful Microsoft is going to be able to pull off anything as sleek and hip as Apple has with its retail stores. And launching stores in major retail areas is an expensive proposition. But I’ll try and keep an open mind. Who knows: Maybe the Redmondians will find a way to one-up the Apple store, minus the attitude….

From what she also said in her post the idea behind the move to retail is to be able to properly showcase Windows 7, Windows Mobile and Windows Live. Microsoft has hired David Porter to head the retail stores division and while he starts his new job in the middle of February there is no word as to when any stores will actually open.

Okay, now you can start up the joke line down the aisle over there but at least try and be original – unlike this idea.

Microsoft to open retail stores [Bad Ideas] is a post from: The Inquisitr