CloudFlare reveals that this year’s holiday's biggest online shopping day was... Black Friday

CloudFlare revealed that the biggest day of the holiday season for holiday shopping this year was Black Friday, the day after the US Thanksgiving holiday, which has been embraced globally as the day retail stores announce their sales. 

But it was believed that the following Monday, dubbed “Cyber Monday,” may be even bigger. Or, with the explosion of reliable two-day and even one-day shipping, maybe another day closer to Christmas has taken the crown. Cloudflare aimed to answer this question for the 2019 holiday shopping season.

Black Friday was the biggest online shopping day but the second biggest wasn't Cyber Monday... it was Thanksgiving Day itself (the day before Black Friday!), with Cyber Monday taking the fourth position. 

Data shows weekends in yellow and Black Friday and Cyber Monday are shown in green. Viewers can see that checkouts ramped up during Thanksgiving week and then continued through the weekend into Cyber Monday.

Black Friday had twice the number of checkouts as the preceding Friday and the entire Thanksgiving week dominates. Post-Cyber Monday, no day reached 50 percent of the number of checkouts witnessed on Black Friday, and Cyber Monday was just 60 percent of Black Friday.

So, Black Friday is the peak day but Thanksgiving Day is the runner up. Perhaps it deserves its own moniker: Thrifty Thursday anyone?

Checkouts occur more frequently from Monday to Friday and then drop off over the weekend. After Cyber Monday only one other day showed an interesting peak. Looking at last week it does appear that Tuesday, Dec. 17 was the pre-Christmas peak for online checkouts. Perhaps fast online shipping made consumers feel they could use online shopping as long as they got their purchases by the weekend before Christmas.

Trend Micro reveals that Magecart group sets sights on Smith & Wesson, other high-profile stores

Trend Micro announced this week that the infamous credit card-skimming group Magecart has struck again. After incidents in the past few months that saw the threat actor go after customers of online shops and hotel chains, the group has set its sights on a new set of targets: high-profile stores, including firearms vendor Smith & Wesson (S&W).

According to security researcher, Willem de Groot of Sanguine Security, threat actors took advantage of the Black Friday rush by injecting credit card skimmers into the sites of a number of high-profile stores such as S&W. The group behind the attack injected the skimmer into S&W’s website on Nov. 27 — a couple of days before Black Friday, most likely in anticipation of the high volume of traffic going to the website. Note that the skimmer has been removed from the S&W store as of the time of writing.

The skimmer features an impressive list of capabilities, such as reverse engineering, a three-stage loader, and multiple layers of JavaScript obfuscation to hide its tracks. When a user visits the compromised website, the command-and-control (C&C) server initially sends harmless code — up until the actual payment process, when the skimmer begins its malicious routine. 

To make the skimming attack look more legitimate, a fake payment confirmation code is presented to the user. Behind the scenes, however, malicious code is already running, sneakily exfiltrating customer data such as payment information to the C&C server.

Sanguine Security notes that these attacks only worked for users which met various criteria, including using U.S.-based IP addresses, using non-Linux-based browsers, and not using the AWS platform.

The rise of Magecart highlights the need for vendors and other organizations to properly secure their websites and applications. Data theft via an attack such as the ones regularly performed by Magecart can mean monetary losses, not only for customers but also for the company whose website or application was compromised, especially given the potentially steep fines meted out to violators of data privacy laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).  

Organizations can minimize the chances of compromise by consistently applying the newest patches and updates to the software they use and by shoring up the authentication mechanisms provided to customers. Furthermore, it is recommended that IT and security teams proactively monitor their websites for any sign of malicious activities, such as unauthorized access or data exfiltration.

Gartner reports that global smartphone demand weak in third quarter this year, as Apple and Xiaomi find their shares declining

Global sales of smartphones to end users continued to decline in the third quarter of 2019, contracting by 0.4 percent compared with the third quarter of 2018, according to data released Tuesday by analyst firm, Gartner. Demand remained weak as consumers became more concerned about getting value for money.

This shift has led brands such as Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo to strengthen their entry-level and mid-tier portfolios. This strategy helped Huawei, Samsung and OPPO grow in the third quarter of 2019. By contrast, Apple recorded another double-digit decline in sales, year over year.

Huawei was the only one of the top-five global smartphone vendors to achieve double-digit growth in smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2019. The company sold 65.8 million smartphones, an increase of 26%, year over year. Huawei’s performance in China was the key driver of its global smartphone sales growth. It sold 40.5 million smartphones in China and increased its share of the country’s market by almost 15 percentage points.

While the ban on Huawei to access key U.S. technologies is yet to be fully implemented as a three-month extension was just announced, the proposed ban brought negativity around Huawei’ brand in the international market. Nevertheless, Huawei’s strong ecosystem in China continued to show growth. 

The current situation with the U.S. has also fostered patriotism among Huawei’s partners, which are now keener to promote its smartphones in China — a development that makes it difficult for local competitors to compete aggressively against Huawei. Huawei’s long investment in subbrands (Honor and Nova), in multichannel operations (online and retail), and in 5G and other technological innovation forms the basis of its success in China.

Samsung maintained the top position globally in the third quarter of 2019, by increasing its smartphone sales by 7.8 percent, year over year. “Samsung’s aggressive revamp of its portfolio, with a focus on midtier and entry-tier segments, strengthened its competitive position,” said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner.

Apple’s iPhone sales continued to decline in the third quarter of 2019. Apple sold 40.8 million iPhones, a year-over-year decline of 10.7%. “Although Apple continued its sales promotions and discounts in various markets, this was not enough to stimulate demand globally,” said Gupta. “In the Greater China market sales of iPhones continued to improve, however, it follows a double-digit decline recorded at the beginning of the year. The iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max saw good initial adoption, which suggests that sales may be positive in the remaining quarter.”

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday approaching, smartphone deals are likely to spur consumer demand in the fourth quarter of 2019. Vendors including Google and Samsung are likely to offer aggressive price promotions not just for their older smartphones but also for new devices such as the Google Pixel 4 and Samsung Galaxy Note 10.

Competition between mobile phone manufacturers will increasingly focus on more intelligent smartphones. These devices will deliver increasingly personalized content and services that draw on users’ contexts and preferences. 

“To deliver relevant personalized experiences, manufacturers will need to improve the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in smartphones and make security capabilities and privacy key aspects of their brands,” said Roberta Cozza, senior research director at Gartner.

At a time of limited technology-led innovation, product managers should focus on offering attractive features at low prices as quickly as possible. By offering better value for money, they can increase demand for smartphones.

“For the majority of smartphone users, desire has shifted away from owning the least expensive smartphone. Today’s smartphone user is opting for midtier smartphones over premium-tier ones because they offer better value for money,” said Gupta. “In addition, while waiting for 5G network coverage to increase to more countries, smartphone users are delaying their purchase decisions until 2020.”