Apple, Inc.

New York City -- Apple will open a store in Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal on Dec. 9.

The store will have regular hours starting at 7 a.m. Monday through Friday, accommodating commuters. It will open later on weekends.

San Francisco -- The 15 cities with the most shopping activity on Black Friday 2011 were Manhattan, N.Y.; San Francisco; Los Angeles; Brooklyn, N.Y.; San Jose, Calif.; Seattle; Chicago; San Diego; Houston; Atlanta; Dallas; Saint Louis;  Portland, Ore.; Austin, Texas; and Minneapolis, according to mint.com, an online personal finance site.

RESTON, Va. — Retailers who promoted their online presence as a way to avoid the crowds this past weekend were rewarded for their efforts with record sales on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.

Retailers who promoted their online presence as a way to avoid the crowds this past weekend were rewarded for their efforts with record sales on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.

Armonk, N.Y. -- U.S. shoppers took advantage of early sales this holiday driving a 39.3% increase in online Thanksgiving day spending while setting the stage for 24.3% online growth on Black Friday compared with the same period last year, according to the fourth annual IBM Coremetrics Black Friday Benchmark study, which tracks more than a million transactions a day, analyzing terabytes of raw data from 500 retailers nationwide.

New York City -- E-commerce spending jumped 26% on Black Friday, according to comscore.

Black Friday web sales totaled $816 million, up from $648 million last year, comScore reported.

“With brick-and-mortar retail also reporting strong gains on Black Friday, it's clear that the heavy promotional activity had a positive impact on both channels," said Gian Fulgoni, chairman, comScore.

Consistent with promotional strategies from previous years, Target is offering some insane prices on popular electronics items. Unfortunately, if holiday shoppers follow the advice of Consumer Reports this year they won’t be coming to Target.

PLANO, Texas — JCPenney, which reported sales and income decreases for the third quarter, has brought on two new executives to join fellow Apple alumnus, CEO, Ron Johnson. 

Plano, Texas -- J.C. Penney Co. reported Monday a loss of $143 million for the quarter ended Oct. 29, compared with a profit of $44 million in the year-ago period. Sagging comps and shrinking margins led to the performance decline.

For the quarter, sales dropped 4.8% to $3.99 billion, reflecting the company’s exit from its catalog and catalog outlet businesses, which it sold off during the quarter. 

As previously reported, same-store sales dipped 1.6%.

New York City -- A Thursday report by the Wall Street Journal said that new J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson, who recently left Apple to run the department store chain, is recruiting other former Apple players to join the J.C. Penney team.

According to the report, J.C. Penney is nearing a deal with Michael Kramer, former CFO of Apple Retail from 2000 to 2005 and currently CEO of Kellwood Co., to join J.C. Penney as its COO. WSJ cited people familiar with the matter, and said Kramer will start at Penney effective Dec. 1.