Online shoppers, or those who received their gifts, are ready to ring in the New Year with new workout equipment.

According to comScore, online sales in the sport & fitness category rose 18 percent from Dec. 1 through Christmas Eve, the largest rise for any category.  (OK, so maybe they didn’t buy wooden weights like the ones being used by this woman in Tokyo last fall.  Perhaps they were buying pricey treadmills or other equipment.)

Next came video games, consoles and accessories, whose sales were up 14 percent.  The only other rise, at a much weaker 4 percent, came in apparel & accessories, driven by big discounts and bad weather, which may have triggered shoppers to buy from home rather than heading out to malls.

Overall it was a dismal online selling season, with sales down 3 percent.  The weakest showing came in the music, movies & videos category, where sales fell a sharp 32 percent.  Office supplies were next, down 30 percent. Even toy sales fell, down 7 percent.

The comScore report compared sales from Dec. 1-Dec. 24, 2008 with sales from Nov. 26-Dec. 19, 2007.  The findings also showed that households with lower incomes bought less online.  Those earning less than $50,000 a year cut their online spending by 13 percent, while those earning more than $100,000 a year actually spent 7 percent more than in 2007.

(Reuters photo of a woman exercising with wooden dumbbells during an event to mark “Respect for the Aged Day” in Tokyo Sept. 15, 2008)

Check Out the drop in online sales.
 
Even online retailers are ready for 2008 to end. After we heard about the abysmal holiday season at stores, comScore said online sales for the holiday period up to Dec. 23 dropped 3 percent. It was the first decline in online spending since comScore started tracking online sales in 2001.
 
The end of 2008 will also mark the first quarter that online sales fell. From Oct. 1 through Dec. 28 e-commerce spending fell 4 percent to $36.8 billion, according to comScore. 
 
So who were the biggest winners and losers in December? Through Dec. 24, Hewlett Packard’s online traffic in the U.S. rose 28 percent to more than 19.4 million unique visitors.  Apple, with more than 35 million visitors, saw its traffic rise 19 percent.  Meanwhile, traffic to Circuit City’s site fell 21 percent.  Presumably shoppers were spooked after it filed for bankruptcy protection and said it would shut some stores. Dell’s traffic was down 17 percent.  EBay was still the most popular site, though its traffic fell 4 percent to 85.4 million visitors.
 

Also in the basket:

Jobless claims drop by much more than expected

China dairy boss pleads guilty in melamine case

Bratz dolls to get reprieve, manufacturer says

Walmart Pulls Out of Nielsen’s PRISM (Advertising Age)

(Reuters photo)