After an initial rush to British retail stores for the Boxing Day sales on Thursday, only 0.5 percent more shoppers showed up than last year, final figures from retail data company Springboard showed.
Overall, 9 percent fewer bargain-hunters visited traditional town center shops, offset by a 10 percent increase at both shopping centers and retail parks as of 4pm.
Early data had shown a rise of 8 percent across the country after many queued early in the morning for bargains, but numbers dropped off later for high street shops, Springboard said.
Photo: EPA
Some stores opened at 6am in London’s main shopping district in the West End and Oxford Street, where over a million people were expected to turn out, according to retailers.
Many shops started Britain’s traditional “January sales” online on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day to meet increasing demand for earlier and deeper discounting.
Britain’s economy has been growing robustly and unemployment has fallen steadily but stagnating wages and rising utility bills are still squeezing living standards.
Department store John Lewis reported record sales for the week before Christmas on Thursday and said that for the first time it expected most British shoppers to use smartphones rather than desktop computers to make online purchases.
It said its sales in the week to Dec. 21 were up 4.2 percent on last year at ￡164.4 million (US$270 million), surpassing the ￡160 million mark for the first time.
The department store is to release its five-week trading update on Thursday.
The retailer also said that on Christmas Day, three in four shoppers used their smartphones or tablets rather than traditional desktops to shop on its site.
“The tipping point has now passed and we expect mobile to be the way the majority of people shop online from now on,” said Mark Lewis, online director at John Lewis.
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
Enhanced tax credits that have helped reduce the cost of health insurance for the vast majority of US Affordable Care Act enrollees expired on Jan.1, cementing higher health costs for millions of Americans at the start of the new year. Democrats forced a 43-day US government shutdown over the issue. Moderate Republicans called for a solution to save their political aspirations this year. US President Donald Trump floated a way out, only to back off after conservative backlash. In the end, no one’s efforts were enough to save the subsidies before their expiration date. A US House of Representatives vote
REVENUE PERFORMANCE: Cloud and network products, and electronic components saw strong increases, while smart consumer electronics and computing products fell Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted 26.51 percent quarterly growth in revenue for last quarter to NT$2.6 trillion (US$82.44 billion), the strongest on record for the period and above expectations, but the company forecast a slight revenue dip this quarter due to seasonal factors. On an annual basis, revenue last quarter grew 22.07 percent, the company said. Analysts on average estimated about NT$2.4 trillion increase. Hon Hai, which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp and iPhones for Apple Inc, is expanding its capacity in the US, adding artificial intelligence (AI) server production in Wisconsin and Texas, where it operates established campuses. This
US President Donald Trump on Friday blocked US photonics firm HieFo Corp’s US$3 million acquisition of assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore Corp, citing national security and China-related concerns. In an order released by the White House, Trump said HieFo was “controlled by a citizen of the People’s Republic of China” and that its 2024 acquisition of Emcore’s businesses led the US president to believe that it might “take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” The order did not name the person or detail Trump’s concerns. “The Transaction is hereby prohibited,”
RSS