U.S. readers: I don’t know about you, but the prospect of braving the Black Friday shopping crowds to get a few good deals just doesn’t seem worth it anymore. I awoke this morning to read about riots, fights, stampedes, and other animalistic behavior at U.S. retail megastores like Target, BestBuy, and Walmart, all in an attempt to get some good deals and a leg up on Christmas shopping. One story tells of a woman who actually used pepper spray on other shoppers in order to “gain an upper hand” in some “competitive shopping.”
Nice.
For my part, I think that online shopping makes total sense, since most of the top retailers offer the same if not similar online deals, from Black Friday until Cyber Monday. This is equally true with iPhone case companies: sensing the fact that there is now a huge crop of new iPhone 4S users, they are really going for it with good Black Friday deals on iPhone 4S cases, figuring that a discounted case is probably the right price for a wide range of Christmas gifting situations.
But first, let’s unpack Apple’s own Black Friday sale.
Not to be outdone, Apple is cutting prices on some of their most beloved toys. According to MacLife, at Apple.com you can “Get a new Mac for $101 off, iPads from $41-61 off (depending on capacity and type), iPod nano for $11 off and iPod touch models from $21-41 off. The big price slash has been reserved for the base model 11.6-inch MacBook Air at $898, but there will also be a wide variety of accessories on sale this Friday as well.” That’s an extremely good deal on the MacBook Air: to be able to get into the world of Apple laptops for under $900 is stunning.
But the first place I wanted to look for Black Friday deals was Case-Mate. They are, after all, the iPhone case company that trotted out those bogus iPhone 5 cases back in the summer, claiming to have an inside track on its “teardrop-shaped” design (which is looking less and less likely for the 2012 iPhone 5). I was curious to see what hot dog promotion they would roll out.
It looks like Case-Mate is going a general promo code sale of 30% off. You can use promo code SaveMore2011 to get it.
Rather than offering a blanket promotion for all orders, Griffin is cherry-picking certain items. The good news is that they are offering up to 80% off on some items — the bad news is that the iPhone 4/4S cases are slim pickens. I count only one case — the Explorer — on sale for the iPhone 4/4S, at just $12.99 instead of $39.99. Not bad at all.
I love Otterbox cases — to me, they are the true iPhone insider’s case. I say “insider’s” because they aren’t the kind of case that the average user picks up at Best Buy — they are more of a “deep cut.” All of this being said, I’m not too thrilled about their Black Friday promotion: instead of giving a chunky discount, they are instead giving away a “free gift,” valued at $15.00, with any order over $30. To me, this means that they are giving away some outmoded accessory or Otterbox-branded trinket — not at all what I’m interested in. But you can see for yourself here.
UNIEA may have the sweetest deal of them all over this weekend. They are doing a 40% off promotion from now until midnight on Cyber Monday, plus $5.95 flat rate shipping worldwide. It is designed to let people stock up on cases and accessories for Christmas presents, with that flat rate shipping promotion really making a difference as you buy more stuff from them. The promo code for their promotion is BLACK40, and the flat rate shipping gets applied at checkout automatically. Go to UNIEA.com to take a look at their stuff.
Zagg, who is well known for their screen covers for the iPhone, has a little Black Friday deal going on, where if you buy their earbuds ($49.99), they give you a $25 gift card back. This is actually a pretty good deal, since they also carry three iPhone 4S cases under $25. Take a look here.
Finally, it is noteworthy which companies decided to pass on doing up a big Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal: I see nothing of real note from Hard Candy, Belkin, or Case Logic. It’s hard to believe that they are doing so well that they don’t need a good Black Friday sale to put them into the “black,” but hey: to each their own.
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