Apple Outdoes Black Friday Sales Forecasts

Initial Black Friday sales figures are trickling in, and -- surprise -- Apple saw some whopping sales figures for the signature shopping day.

According to a report in mashable.com, Apple had forecast four times the normal sales volume, and topped that by 7 p.m. Among the discounts were $101 off several laptop models, now presumably in less demand because of the iPad.

Apple is the nation's most valuable publicly owned company, with a market cap of more than $330 billion. The company has a retail store at the Mall of Georgia in Buford.

This year was expected to be particularly attractive to online shoppers. According to a report from comScore, Black Friday saw $816 million in online sales, a 26 percent increase over last year.

According to foxnews.com, a record 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites during the four-day holiday weekend starting Thursday, up from 212 million last year. Americans spent more, too: The average holiday shopper spent $398.62 over the weekend, up from $365.34 a year ago.

Overall, holiday spending is expected to grow by a modest 2.8 percent to about $466 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. A better picture on spending will come Thursday, when major retailers report November sales figures.