Walmart is already crowing about Black Friday and we’re only a couple of hours into the actual day itself. That’s because depressingly, Black Friday has somehow subsumed Thanksgiving Thursday and become the Day That Spans Many Days. Oh well; at least they sold a huge boatload of tablets. Walmart puts its one day sales of those mobile computing devices at 1.4 million, and while it doesn’t break down by brand or model, the company also cites the iPad mini as one of a short list of top-selling items.
Also included in that list are the generic categories of big screen TVs and laptops, so you can imagine that the iPad mini likely accounted for a significant portion of those 1.4 million slates to be called out by name. Other top-selling items included Microsoft’s new Xbox One, and Sony’s PlayStation 4, indicating that the home console market is still alive and kicking despite the rise of mobile game and sluggish sales for Nintendo’s Wii U console, which made its debut last year.
It’s worth noting that Walmart sold twice as many towels as it did tablets, at 2.8 million moved on the day when Americans get together to give thanks, stuff themselves with turkeys and buy towels. And of course, Walmart’s press release sort of glosses over the fact that its stores have become sites for riots, fights, bad manners and all sorts of various reminders that humans are essentially the worst. At least some of those 1.4 million tablets sold went to the victors of squabbles, according to Twitter.