Holiday Sales Help Push Profit Up at Microsoft

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For Target’s Shoppers, a New Holiday To-Do List

Q. If you shopped at Target during that period, what should you do now?

A. The first thing you should do is go online and check your credit card or bank statement. If everything looks fine, make a note to go back and check the statements again every few days.

If you see suspicious charges, contact your credit card company or your financial institution right away.

Q. What should you look for, and for how long?

A. With lots of extra purchases being made for the holidays, this can be a tricky time of year to remember what you bought, so it’s important to be extra vigilant.

According to John Ulzheimer, a consumer credit expert for Credit Sesame, the “smart fraudster” won’t go out and buy a dozen big-screen TVs. They will make small purchases, like something for $29, at an inconspicuous venue like a drugstore, to try to avoid any notice.

“What that does is it lets them know they’ve got a valid card that’s still in play, and then they can pepper you to death with it,” Mr. Ulzheimer said. “So even if it’s a small dollar amount, it doesn’t hurt to verify to make sure it was really you.”

A thief might also sit on the card information for a period of months, maybe even years, Mr. Ulzheimer said, waiting for an initial spurt of vigilance to subside, so it is important to pay attention in the long run.

Q. If a thief makes a purchase, will I be liable?

A. In most cases, federal law limits consumer liability to a maximum of $50 in the case of credit card fraud. The ceiling for debit card liability is higher, up to $500. Another concern, according to Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, is that if money is drained from a consumer’s bank account, it can take weeks for the victim to be made whole again. This can cause a great deal of strain for somebody without a financial cushion.

Q. Should I cancel my credit or debit card?

A. While Mr. Ulzheimer says that at this juncture, people do not need to cancel their cards, other experts disagree.

Eva Velasquez, chief executive of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit that helps victims of identity theft, suggests that people who shopped at Target when the data was breached cancel their credit card and get a new one. If shoppers used a debit card, she said they should get a new card and change their PIN — PINs should be changed periodically anyway, so now is a good time to do it.

Q. How do I monitor for identify theft?

A. While experts emphasize that a data breach and identify theft are different, Ms. Velasquez says that the former can increase your chances of the latter.

You can receive a free annual credit report from each of the three major reporting bureaus at AnnualCreditReport.com. You can also add a 90-day fraud alert to your credit file so creditors will know to take extra precautions before approving any credit applications.

Often, Mr. Ulzheimer said, companies that have experienced similar breaches will buy credit monitoring services for affected customers. And people who think they may have been affected can also sign up for free credit monitoring.

The most aggressive thing you can do is put a freeze on your credit, which will make it impossible for anyone — including you — to open new lines of credit. But this can be inconvenient, Ms. Velasquez said, and is not always something that can be undone immediately.

Q. Is it safe to shop at Target now?

A. While Ms. Velasquez says that at this early stage, the answer to that question is a personal decision, others, like Mr. Ulzheimer, say it is perfectly safe to go ahead and do so. If you use cash, experts agree that the answer is yes.

Pogue's Posts: A New Kindle Fire, Just in Time for the Holiday Season

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After Weak Holiday Sales, Nook Tablets Will Add Google’s App and Media Store

Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookstore chain, is seeking a lift in the highly competitive tablet market after a disappointing holiday season for the Nook.

“It opens up a whole world of content and really gives HD and HD Plus a unique position,” William J. Lynch Jr., the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said in an interview, referring to the company’s two color tablets. “There’s no question this is going to accelerate sales.”

Company executives said Nook owners would be able to choose from 700,000 apps, including Facebook, Twitter and Netflix — even Amazon’s Kindle app.

The bookseller has recently vowed to focus more on digital content, including books, movies and popular apps, while beginning to moderate its investment in its digital hardware division.

In the quarter that ended Jan. 26, Nook revenue declined to $316 million, from $427 million over the same period the year ago.

“Of all the things that Barnes & Noble could do to expand its potential audience, running the features of Android that consumers like is a great step,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, a senior analyst with Forrester Research. “You can’t change the fundamentals of Barnes & Noble’s brand and their customer footprint and the economics of their business, but adding more Android features makes this product more appealing to more customers.”

After the holiday season, Mr. Lynch said on Thursday, Barnes & Noble learned that “the No. 1 reason for nonbuyers in the tablet market, as it related to Nook, was the lack of breadth and apps.” That was, he said, “the one area where we were deficient.”

Michael Norris, senior analyst for Simba Information, said the deal with Google would help Barnes & Noble do what Amazon has done well: create a comprehensive online shopping center of nonbook media.

“I think Barnes & Noble is learning a few lessons from Amazon,” Mr. Norris said. “And that has to do with sweetening the deal and adding value for the consumer. Amazon has always had a greater variety of movie and video content, and I think Barnes & Noble is hoping to erase part of their entertainment deficit.”

Barnes & Noble’s seven-inch Nook HD sells for $199, and the nine-inch Nook HD Plus for $269.

Mr. Lynch said that Barnes & Noble executives had considered a deal with Google for two years, but stepped up those discussions in the last four months.

To date, Barnes & Noble has sold more than 10 million Nooks in the United States; it introduced the product in 2009 as e-book sales took off.

Media Decoder Blog: Barnes & Noble's Strategy Is Questioned as Holiday Nook Sales Decline

Brendan McDermid/Reuters A Barnes & Noble store in New York City. Overall sales in the nine-week holiday season for the retailer fell 10.9 percent.

8:21 a.m. | Updated For Barnes & Noble, the digital future is not what it used to be.

After a year spent signaling its commitment to build its business through its Nook division, Barnes & Noble on Thursday announced disappointing holiday sales figures, with steep declines that underscored the challenge it faces in transforming from its traditional retail format.

Retail sales from the company’s bookstores and its Web site, BN.com, decreased 10.9 percent from the comparable nine-week holiday period a year earlier, to $1.2 billion, the company reported. More worrisome for the long-term future of the company, sales in the Nook unit that includes e-readers, tablets, digital content and accessories decreased 12.6 percent over the same period, to $311 million.

“They are not selling the devices, they are not selling books and traffic is down,” said Mike Shatzkin, the founder and chief executive of Idea Logical, a consultant to publishers. “I’m looking for an optimistic sign and not seeing one. It is concerning.”

Julio Cortez/Associated Press Nooks at a Barnes & Noble distribution center. The e-reader unit’s holiday sales fell 12.6 percent.

The results, covering a period that ended Dec. 29, are a sobering development for the nation’s largest bookstore chain. The declines occurred during what is supposed to be peak buying season. And the Nook unit’s sagging fortunes came despite a 13 percent increase in sales of digital content, suggesting that it is the tepid demand for Nook devices that is dragging down the unit’s performance.

Barnes & Noble has invested heavily in developing a tablet that can compete with offerings from media giants like Google, Apple and Amazon.com. Last April, in announcing a $300 million investment in Nook by Microsoft, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble’s chief executive, William J. Lynch, said the company wanted “to solidify our position as a leader in the exploding market for digital content in the consumer and education segments.”

A few months after that, the bookseller began breaking out the financial results of the Nook division, In October it completed its strategic partnership with Microsoft by creating Nook Media, a subsidiary and a signal that it was ready to ride its digital business into the future.

But while Barnes & Noble’s most recent Nooks have won critical praise, they have failed to gain significant traction with consumers.

Other companies do not break out sales of their digital tablets, but Amazon has been saying sales of its Kindle Fire were strong. Analysts say Apple’s iPads also appear to be doing well.

“The problem is not whether or not the Nook is good,” said James L. McQuivey, a media analyst for Forrester Research. “What matters is whether you are locked into a Kindle library or an iTunes library or a Nook library. In the end, who holds the content that you value?”

For an increasing number of consumers, he said, the answer is not Barnes & Noble.

Though the company’s stock was down only slightly — falling 2 percent to $14.22 — the reaction in the financial world was unsparing. Analysts stopped short of saying that this was a do-or-die moment for the Nook Media division, but they acknowledged that options for a strong digital future were narrowing.

In a note to clients, S&P Capital IQ said, “We think this portends greater market share losses for the Nook over the medium term” and downgraded its recommendation on Barnes & Noble stock from hold to sell. Barclays said in a note that the Nook’s precipitous decline was “quite concerning” and “below even our modest expectations.”

The declining retail numbers were also troubling when viewed in the context of a rise in sales among independent booksellers. The American Booksellers Association, which has not yet released official holiday sales, estimated Thursday that its members’ sales would be up about 8 percent over last year.

Barnes & Noble executives were not available Thursday to discuss the sales numbers. But a statement from Mr. Lynch indicated that the company was searching for a solution.

“Nook device sales got off to a good start over the Black Friday period, but then fell short of expectations for the balance of holiday,” Mr. Lynch said. “We are examining the root cause of the December shortfall in sales, and will adjust our strategies accordingly going forward.”

The most intriguing, and troublesome, question is whether the company can stay in the digital device business at all over the long run. Nook has been expensive to develop and market and the company does not have the hefty financial resources of its competitors.

Other options are strategic partnerships. Microsoft’s investment last spring was seen at the time as a way to promote Nook through a powerful partner. But sales of the Windows 8 operating system have been disappointing and the Nook has been featured as little more than an app among hundreds on the Windows 8 platform.

“It is going to prove to be a missed opportunity,” said Mr. McQuivey of Forrester.

Last month, Barnes & Noble announced that Pearson, the British education and publishing conglomerate, was taking a 5 percent stake in Nook for $89.5 million. Analysts said that cash investment was welcome and the partnership with Pearson, a major publisher of educational textbooks, might herald a strategy to move toward dominating an education niche market. Still, that would be a significantly smaller business.

App Smart: Create and Track Your Gift List, or Send a Silly Holiday Card

But while I’m out strolling the beach, snapping snowless photos, I’ll have my smartphones and tablets with me, loaded with seasonal apps. And there are some great ones.

One that comes with a helping of nostalgia and could be suitable for older children, is “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” $5 on iOS or Android. It’s an e-book with interactive elements on each page, narrated by none other than Peter Robbins — the original animated voice of Charlie Brown. He’s grown up now, but where Charlie speaks in the story, you hear classic recordings of Peter being Charlie. Children will love the graphics that react to touch, like the playable piano. It is adorable, but so steeped in Charlie Brown history that you may, like me, find the mood of the cartoon a bit depressing.

More silliness can be found in Christmas Booth Festive Photo Fun, free on iOS, in which you apply stickers to a photo to make anyone look like Santa, an elf and other characters. It’s ideal for making images for silly greeting cards. The usual iPhone gestures control the stickers, making the app easy to use. For Android, a similar free app is Santa Camera, but adjusting the stickers’ size and angle is done through a menu and thus is not as intuitive.

More seasonal fun can be found in 3-D Christmas Live Wallpaper, free on Android, which offers a sparkling tree-shaped graphic as your device’s background image. Among the many festive wallpapers in the app store, this is my favorite: it gently animates as you switch screens, and from time to time it changes into a glittery countdown clock.

A different holiday countdown is found in the official Norad Tracks Santa app. On Christmas Eve, it follows Santa as he speeds around the world on his sleigh to deliver gifts. But until then, it has some simple games to divert you and a precise countdown clock. It’s free and available for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8.

Those who fancy adding some seasonal ringtones and alerts to an Android device might check out Christmas Ringtones, free from JRJ Unlimited. Its tunes and sound effects can be set as alerts with a simple long press on the icons. Some of them are merry indeed, but here’s a warning: Don’t let your children play with this if you don’t want to hear endless sleigh bells or ho-ho-ho’s before Christmas Day.

Apps can also help you with gift-giving. If you’re at a loss for ideas, you may find the Gift Professor (free on iOS and Android) helpful. I was skeptical as I tapped in details for my wife, like her profession, personality and interests. But the app ultimately came up with some gift ideas that I think she’d genuinely like. You can use it simply to generate ideas, but it also has links to online stores, allowing you easily buy the items it suggests.

The Gifted - Gift List Manager app ($2 on iOS) is similarly handy; it helps you track your gift ideas and your progress in buying them. You can use it to keep notes on a person’s preferences and clothing sizes, and it can help you track how much money you’ve spent. It’s both neatly designed and well organized — so much so that if you thrive on the chaos of holiday gift shopping, you’ll dislike it. Free Christmas List, a similar app on Android, has an interface that is graphically more entertaining, though it doesn’t have quite the sophistication of the iOS offering.

Holiday season is also party season, and for those who are planning a gathering, Simple Soiree ($2 on iOS) is for you. It’s an organizer that can help you manage everything from guest lists to shopping for supplies.

And with that, all that’s left for me to do is to wish you a merry old time.

Quick Calls

A beautiful app to count down to Christmas, the New Year or someone’s birthday is Countdown Star, for $2 on iOS. A nice feature is that it’s easy to switch from counting in days to hours or even seconds. ... Android users may like the new Wakeify-Spotify Alarm. This free app connects to your Spotify account, so you arise to your favorite tunes. It cleverly controls the volume to wake you gently.

Gadgetwise Blog: App Smart Extra: More Holiday Apps

As befits the date, this week’s App Smart column was about Christmas-related apps. We talked about a variety of them, like photo effects or storytelling ones.

My favorite book at this time of year has always been “The Night Before Christmas,” and there’s a fabulous interactive e-book version on iTunes free (Peter, Paul and Mary’s “The Night Before Christmas”). It’s great to read with your kids, letting them tap on the screen to activate the hidden special effects in the images — like jingling the stockings hung by the fire. You can also let the app run by itself, reading the story aloud. Older children will be able to work out how to tap the right icon to turn the page.

Fitting for a year where the “Gangnam Style” video became the biggest YouTube hit, there’s a free Gangnam SantaBooth app on iOS that may tickle you. It does exactly what you think it does, placing a photo of your head (sporting a Santa hat) into an animation of a character dancing just like the music video. It’s great for mates, but perhaps not for sending seasonal messages to grandma. For your grandmother, you might find the $2 iOS app Vintage Christmas Cards a suitable alternative; it has a hundred classic greeting card designs to download. You can e-mail them or print them out, personalize them and send them.

Android device owners can customize their devices with live wallpapers. And there are a lot of seasonal options, including another amusing animated Gangnam Santa one. One of the more elegant apps is the Christmas Tree Live Wallpaper app. It’s clever enough to let you customize various aspects of the tree to suit your taste. It’s free on Google Play.

If you want to track Santa on his speedy journey around the planet delivering gifts, an alternative to the popular NORAD app is Santa Tracker Christmas Free (on iOS or Android). This app graphically maps the sleigh’s flight at the right time. But until then it has a lovely 3-D animated graphic of the Earth. And it follows Santa as he prepares, either organizing at the North Pole or flying to check if children have been naughty or nice. Since the animation zips to different parts of the globe, it may be a neat trick for teaching children some geography.

Quick Call

The fun app maker Toca Boca has a new $1 app for iOS and Kindle Fire: Toca Hair Salon 2, successor to the successful first edition. Like the original, but with some new tricks like better graphics and extra styling tools, the light-hearted app is about styling and preparing the hair of some cartoonish characters.

Thefts a Concern as Holiday Deliveries Increase

As the peak of the holiday gift-buying season approaches and more people are ordering online, here is the downside: Grinch-like bandits are swiping the deliveries from doorsteps when families are not home. Some thieves follow U.P.S. and FedEx trucks along their routes and nab the gifts, while others simply drive through residential neighborhoods looking for packages.

In River Forest, Ill., where the police arrested two young men last week, accusing them of stealing deliveries from homes, plainclothes police officers trail U.P.S. trucks to ferret out thieves who may be following them, Cmdr. Jim O’Shea said.

“This is common at this time of year,” Commander O’Shea said. “We’re trying to take a proactive approach to curtail this.”

So far this holiday season, Americans have spent $21.4 billion online, up 14 percent from last year, according to comScore, a research company. U.P.S. alone expects to deliver more than 500 million packages, and with many of them being left on doorsteps, there could be ample opportunity for thieves to strike.

The Better Business Bureau now recommends that customers be proactive, asking their shipping companies for tracking numbers and requiring signatures upon delivery. If they are not at home, customers should ask for their packages to be held at a lobby desk or at a local shipping center, advised Claire Rosenzweig, the president of the group’s New York chapter.

There are no national statistics on doorstep thefts, but reports of local episodes abound. In Burbank, Calif., with five reported incidents this year, compared with one last year, two teenagers were arrested last month after they were found trailing a U.P.S. truck. One young man was released, while the other person, Ararat Gevondyan, 19, was charged with receiving stolen property, with his bail set at $10,000.

“It’s a crime of opportunity,” Sgt. Darin Ryburn of the Burbank Police Department said. The burglars are “going through these packages for items that could be resold,” he said.

On Long Island, two young men were arrested this week, suspected of stealing headphones, an iPad case and two pairs of Skechers shoes from homes in the Bay Shore area.

A few of the thefts have been caught by home surveillance cameras set up to catch or deter vandals. A television station in Pasadena, Calif., showed a video of a woman taking a package from a doorstep. The homeowner said she never got the Paula Deen electric salt-and-pepper shaker her sister had sent her.

While it may seem extreme to install cameras to keep an eye on packages, this type of home surveillance has become more common in recent years, said Marc Horowitz, a spokesman for Brickhouse Security. The company’s sales for home security cameras have more than doubled in the past year, he said, as the cameras have become less expensive. A simple motion-activated porch camera costs about $100.

Some camera customers fear the culprit is closer to home, breaking that commandment of the cul-de-sac, Do Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Flat-Screen TV.

Mr. Horowitz said he had heard reports from his sales representatives that some customers were buying cameras because they suspected neighbors of pilfering packages (or newspapers and plants).

U.P.S. started a program last year called U.P.S. My Choice, which allows a customer to receive an e-mail or text message before a package arrives and reroute it if no one is going to be home.

U.P.S. drivers are also trained to leave packages out of sight, said Natalie Godwin, a company spokeswoman. Ms. Godwin was with a driver in Atlanta on Tuesday when he decided not to leave a package on someone’s stoop because it was clearly an expensive computer monitor. He dropped it off nearby at the apartment complex’s office.

Drivers leave notes telling the tenants where to find packages, Ms. Godwin said. Often, she added, “They’ll use their own judgment.”

Strategies: A Holiday Shopping Stampede, but Maybe No Economic Jolt

THE holiday shopping season started early, and with a roar. Whether that will help the sagging economy is another matter.

“Spending may well be strong, and that could help us get through another Christmas,” said William R. Emmons, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “But the economy is unbalanced and we’re still in an enormous crisis.”

So, despite the early crowds at shopping malls, it’s worth noting that much of the consumption is being financed indirectly — through the expansive monetary policies of the Fed, and through deficit spending that has created an enormous budget gap. “At some point, we can’t go on like this,” Mr. Emmons said.

For now, the nation’s retailers are doing their best to infuse the holidays with the spirit of consuming. “Door-busting” bargains began on Thanksgiving Day instead of on Black Friday, as had been the custom. Online discounts started weeks ago, and Cyber Monday, formerly a one-day event, is morphing into a consumption extravaganza unbound by space or time.

“We’re keeping the Cyber Monday party going all week long,” Amazon.com said on its site on Thursday afternoon. Walmart declared that its site was “the only place to go” for Cyber Week. “Shop now while supplies last,” it said. And Target offered rapture: “Get online-only deals all week. Oh joy!”

Over all, the efforts have yielded a mixed harvest. Some reports suggest that the early shopping has been robust, if not extraordinary. A survey for the National Retail Federation found that 247 million people did some shopping in the four days starting on Thanksgiving, up 9.2 percent from last year. Total spending reached $59.1 billion, up nearly 13 percent.

But a report on Thursday showed that overall sales at 16 retailers — including chains like Macy’s, Nordstrom, Kohl’s and Target — increased only 1.6 percent in November for stores open at least a year. Those figures included early holiday sales.

Furthermore, the financial crisis, the recession and the anemic recovery have constrained the appetites of many voracious consumers.

“History shows that people only have so much money to spend during the holidays,” said Paul Dales, an economist at Capital Economics, a private forecasting group. “And if they spend more of it on Black Friday, they’ll probably spend less of it later in the season.”

In other words, while the hoopla of early sales may offer hints about the competitive advantages of specific retailers — Amazon.com or Walmart, for example — it may not mean much about consumer spending as a whole.

Real income is stagnating, and consumer spending dropped 0.2 percent in October, the Commerce Department reported on Friday. Even so, consumer spending accounts for 70.6 percent of gross domestic product, Mr. Emmons said — a higher proportion than before the recession. That suggests a predicament for policy makers, he said, because high levels of consumer spending are associated with a relatively low pace of economic growth.

The economy needs more exports and investment, and less consumer spending, he said. “We really could use a consumption tax to help increase household saving,” he said. But with the economy as weak as it is, he acknowledged, such a tax would not be very popular in Washington.

Consumption during the holidays should be curbed for ecological, cultural and ethical reasons, said Kalle Lasn, co-founder of the Adbusters Media Foundation. He advocates transforming Black Friday into Buy Nothing Day — “a day to return to the roots of the holiday, to the frugality — to living lightly — which is really the essence of Christianity and of all great religions.” Mr. Lasn, who helped start the Occupy Wall Street movement, called overconsumption a cause of climate change and other ills. “It needs to stop,” he said, “before we destroy this planet.”

But efforts to curb consumer spending, especially in the holiday season, may run counter to deep habits and traditions. American holidays have been defined by an uneasy alliance among business, religion and politics, said Leigh Eric Schmidt, author of “Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays.”

“Commerce and religion and patriotism are all part of what we have come to know as the holidays,” said Mr. Schmidt, a professor of humanities at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Consumption during the holiday season has come to have a kind of patriotic quality in the United States,” he said. In fact, extending the holiday season, and exhorting people to spend, has sometimes been a matter of public policy.

IN 1939, during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called Thanksgiving “a perfectly movable feast” — and he moved up the holiday by one week, from its traditional date on the last Thursday of November. He thus proclaimed that Thanksgiving would be on Nov. 23 that year, not Nov. 30.

His agenda was transparent. The economy needed help. As an experiment, he said, he would try to give retailers a boost by extending the holiday season. But public opinion was no more unified then than it is now, and his policy was not universally welcomed.

The New York Times of Aug. 15, 1939, captured the mood: “Roosevelt to Move Thanksgiving; Retailers for It, Plymouth Is Not. Football Schedule Makers Also Get a Headache, With Season Set to End With Fifth Thursday in November.”

The president’s home state, New York, went along with the change, but Connecticut was among many that didn’t. Families were divided. Eleanor Lucy Blydenburgh, a student at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, said that while her school holiday would be Nov. 23, her parents would celebrate on Nov. 30. “Really, this situation makes my heart ache,” she wrote the president, in a letter held by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library.

What’s more, as Roosevelt ruefully acknowledged in 1941, the extra days didn’t stimulate the economy. There was no net increase in sales. “The experiment had not worked,” The Times reported in May 1941. People shifted their shopping days but didn’t buy more.

Congress resolved the issue in time for Thanksgiving in 1942. It legislated that the holiday would henceforth be on November’s fourth Thursday, which isn’t always the last one.

That’s why Thanksgiving this year was on Nov. 22, not last Thursday. So, once again, there are extra shopping days, as well as endless consumption opportunities online — and reason to doubt that they will mean much for the economy.