Early Holiday Sales All About The iPod nano

Leading retailers report sales of Apple's iPod nano digital music players shot through the roof over Thanksgiving weekend. Favorite color? Black. (Barely.)

The Thanksgiving weekend traditional marks the start of the holiday buying season in the U.S., and Apple’s iPod nano got off to a strong start, with the black 2 GB model jumping to the number 6 spot on Amazon.com’s list of most popular electronics items, while the white 2 GB version occupied the number 10 spot. But the stats changed Monday, as Amazon.com sold out of the black 2 GB unit, giving the still-available white 2 GB model a surge of popularity.

Best Buy’s Web site sold out of both the black and white versions of the 4 GB iPod nano, although a spokesperson for Best Buy noted the company had to throttle back its online sales due to high traffic volume related to the launch of Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

eBay Marketplace Research found sales of 4 GB iPod nanos jumped 95 percent from November 25 and 26 compared to a week earlier.

Apparently, consumers are in serious danger of being un-hip if they haven’t already purchased an iPod, or fail to do so by the end of the holiday season. Apple, meanwhile, intends to keep fueling the fire, having secured agreements with Toshiba, Hynix, Micron, and Samsung to supply NAND flash memory through 2010.

To date, Apple has sold more than 30 million iPods.