That’s especially tough in a country like the U.S., where big phone subsidies mean that one has to compete against free iPhone 4 and Android devices. Even the top-end devices generally sell for under $200 with a contract.

However, with T-Mobile’s recent move away from phone subsidies, Nokia and Microsoft are pouncing on an opportunity to offer a new smartphone at a noticeably lower price.

The Lumia 521, which runs on T-Mobile’s network, sells for around $150 unsubsidized. That’s hundreds less than many other smartphones. It goes on sale at Walmart and Microsoft stores next week, after selling out during a run on HSN.

Speaking at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference earlier this month, Windows Phone boss Terry Myerson noted the difficulty that Microsoft and its partners have had in subsidized markets such as the U.S.

“If every phone is $200, we are the challenger at the same price,” Myerson said. “That’s a playing field that is a little harder.”

T-Mobile’s move away from subsidies could create more room for Microsoft — and for others targeting the low end of the market.

The Lumia 521 is a T-Mobile customized version of a low-end model that Nokia introduced back in February.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that Windows Phone needs to continue to come in less-expensive phones in order to effectively compete against Android.

“There’s definitely an opportunity to push to even lower price points,” he said.

Microsoft is also taking a harder line in its advertising, debuting an ad that goes directly after Android and the iPhone.

Imagine walking into one of Walmart’s stores today. You’ll see the familiar aisles, the usual customer service floor reps, the check-out stands. You’ll shop as you always have.

The Walmart of tomorrow, however, wants to be nothing like the Walmart you know today.

The multinational retail giant is in the midst of reshaping its entire e-commerce strategy, aiming to reclaim a waning customer base which in recent years has moved toward online shopping. Despite the company’s most intense efforts only coming to fruition over the past 18 months, Walmart hopes to use its massive brick-and-mortar footprint to leverage its wide range of digital initiatives.

That isn’t a farfetched notion; roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population live within five miles of a Walmart. “No one else has 4,000 points of distribution within a stone’s throw of every customer in America,” said Neil Ashe, President and CEO of Walmart Global eCommerce, at an event with reporters on Tuesday.

But, as the rise of e-commerce obviously shows, having a broad physical presence isn’t enough anymore. Companies like Amazon and eBay have captured large segments of retail market share that industry leaders like Walmart once securely held, while Walmart sees slower growth in its traditional outlets; same-store U.S. sales for the last 16 weeks ending in April are expected to be relatively flat compared to the year-ago quarter, Walmart U.S. CEO Bill Simon said on the company’s last earnings call in February.

Walmart Global eCommerce is the company’s answer to this, a 1,500-person wing of the retail giant headquartered in San Bruno, Calif. — right up the road from Silicon Valley (and across the street from Google’s YouTube offices).

Some of Walmart’s most interesting digital experiments in recent years have sprung from this location, due to what the company claims is a Valley-type atmosphere of product development and execution, allowing multiple small teams to plan and execute product ideas at a much faster pace than usual. The company hosts occasional “hack days” like other startups, dedicating days to working on whatever engineers want, and then putting those ideas into practice. Sri Subranamiam, VP of search and catalog, said the company runs A/B tests constantly, and introduces new features on a weekly basis.

“There’s a reason we call ourselves the world’s biggest startup,” said Jeremy King, Walmart eCommerce CTO. “We like to act like that.”

And you’ll probably notice that many of these experiments are mobile-focused. (Perhaps a good idea, considering that more than half of Walmart’s U.S. customer base owns smartphones.) Scan and Go, a feature that Walmart is slowly rolling out to more than 200 stores in an expanded testing phase, lets a customer scan the bar codes of the different items they choose while moving through the store aisles using their smartphone. As the customer approaches checkout, they need only show a bar code to a kiosk’s screen, which automatically loads all the item data into the machine and prompts you with the total you need to pay.

The company also plans to update its mobile app in the near future, with greater emphasis on creating shopping lists before arriving to the store, finding coupons within the app to apply at the point of sale, and continuing to track your monthly purchasing budget via e-receipts and account management using Walmart’s Web portal.

It’s a digital approach to a kind of vertical integration; if Walmart can own the entire shopping experience from purchase planning to comparison tracking to point-of-sale and ultimately to managing a customer’s budget and lead to revisiting the store, the company could do better to protect itself from losing customers to the Targets, eBays or Amazons of the world at some point through the purchasing process.

But Walmart isn’t putting all of its digital eggs into one basket. It’s hedging strongly by trying out myriad programs simultaneously, expanding the ones that seem to have traction, and killing the ones that don’t. On Tuesday, for example, SVP of Walmart Innovations Jeff McAllister announced that the company would soon begin testing an in-store product-locker pickup service, similar to the likes of programs being tested by Amazon, UPS and the Google-acquired BufferBox.

Another big potential area for revamping: Social. Right now, there’s little direct integration with Facebook and Twitter outside of “Liking” the Walmart Facebook pages or tweeting about products. But if the company were to allow users to sign in to a custom Walmart profile using their Facebook or Twitter account, it could lead to better item suggestions and data on what sorts of products shoppers are interested in buying. Walmart hasn’t said this is happening, but it hinted strongly at something like it.

“The future for us is personalization,” said Ben Galbraith, VP of global products. “Right now, there are ways to personalize for customers who aren’t signed in, but we’ll introduce more and more perzonalization over time.”

Of course, while Walmart talks a big game, the proof is ultimately in the pudding — or rather, the balance sheet. The company has had the better part of two years to work on its digital initiatives, but early attempts saw some executive turnover, and struggles with how far away from the company’s Bentonville headquarters the Silicon Valley office should be. It has a history of making large e-commerce pronouncements without delivering entirely solid returns.

“They’re saying all the right things, but the challenge is the numbers,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, a retail analyst at Forrester Research. “They really haven’t fully converted to being as strong in digital to compete with players like Amazon yet.”

Still, the company maintains that its digital strategy is in its early days, and any number of the many, many startup-like initiatives could expand and grow into a larger part of the business.

“There’s a method to the madness,” said Gibu Thomas, SVP of mobile and digital.

For Walmart’s sake, let’s hope so.

The initiative, announced at a small event at its San Bruno, Calif., offices on Tuesday, will begin to roll out in a limited capacity starting this summer. Initially, the company expects to install lockers in only “a few dozen stores,” according to SVP of Walmart Innovations Jeff McAllister, to see how customers respond to the program.

The move follows a larger trend of trying to bridge the divide between digital and physical, aiming to better capture the portion of the general public who continue to shop online and don’t necessarily enjoy the in-store browsing and shopping experience.

Internet retail giant Amazon has already installed a series of lockers at public locations across the country. Other companies are also dabbling in the space; Google acquired BufferBox late last year, which offers a similar locker pickup service, while eBay, UPS and ShopRunner all offer comparable services as well.

Scan & Go, which allows shoppers to scan an item’s bar code with their iPhone and then pay for it at a Walmart self-checkout station, is currently available in about 70 stores. In the coming months, the retailer will roll it out to some 130 more, expanding it to more than 200 stores.

That’s about triple the number the pilot program began with, though still only a fraction of Walmart’s more than 4,000 U.S. locations. But evidently the big-box retailer sees a lot of promise in this app-based checkout system. Walmart figures that about 50 percent of its shoppers use smartphones, and it has determined that about half the customers who have shopped with Scan & Go have done so more than once.

And that’s reason enough for the company to further expand it. Walmart is in the process of adding self-checkout lanes to another 1,000 or so stores this year. Expanding the Scan & Go pilot in concert with that effort makes a lot of sense, as does bolstering it with an Android version of the app. And that, too, is in the works.

The company’s opposition to the proposal is a little surprising, since the bill itself would not substantially change the way it conducts business. But eBay is arguing that it could affect the lives of some of its largest marketplace sellers.

“No small business should face new taxes,” said Brian Bieron, eBay’s senior director of global public policy. “There’s no benefit compared to the harm that would be done.”

The Marketplace Fairness Act, reintroduced to the Senate this week, will allow states to collect sales tax online, as long as they have simplified their tax laws.

Hundreds of companies support the proposal, including Amazon, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Gap, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, REI, Sears, Target and Walmart. Many brick-and-mortar retailers, in particular, are throwing their weight behind it because they believe that, for years now, Amazon has had an unfair advantage because it did not collect sales tax at the time of purchase.

The two organizations listed as being in opposition are eBay and the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, according to materials supplied by the supporters. Other organizations, however, are against the bill.

EBay says it worries about the law’s impact on small businesses in particular. If passed, retailers that have less than $1 million in out-of-state sales in the prior calendar year can apply for exemption.

But Bieron says that number is not nearly high enough and is completely arbitrary. He says that the U.S. Small Business Administration has definitions for what constitutes a small business, and that it has determined that a company that deals in “electronic shopping” is small until it reaches $30 million in revenue — or 30 times the exemption level.

EBay declined to say how many of its sellers would have to start paying taxes if the law was passed. It said that its largest customers are usually also selling on other platforms, so they don’t know how many would be above the limit. “We do know that we have a couple hundred thousand folks who are small businesses and entrepreneurs; they are more than casual sellers,” Bieron said.

The whole point of the law is for states to simplify the tax-collection process, but Bieron argues that the the proposal would still be too onerous for a company with limited resources.

“Our view has always been that a small business exemption should protect a small business,” he said.

In a letter sent to the Senate on Thursday, Paul Misener, Amazon’s VP for global public policy, applauded the bill: “I am writing to thank you for your bill, which will allow states with simplified rules to require sales tax collection by out-of-state sellers who choose to make sales to in-state buyers.”

The Marketplace Fairness Act was introduced to the Senate today, which would enable states to collect sales tax online, as long as they have simplified their tax laws.

In a letter, Paul Misener, Amazon’s VP for global public policy, said, “I am writing to thank you for your bill, which will allow states with simplified rules to require sales tax collection by out-of-state sellers who choose to make sales to in-state buyers.”

Misener never comes out and explicitly says that Amazon supports the bill, but he hints that, with close cooperation, it could be a winner: “Amazon.com has long supported a simplified nationwide approach that is evenhandedly applied and applicable to all but the smallest volume sellers.”

Collecting sales tax can be a nightmare. Not only does it depend on what state or country the customer lives in, but also on where the purchaser is — down to the city block, potentially — if he or she is buying something on the phone. Depending on the state, it could also be determined by the shipping address.

Amazon has been considered a prime example for why tax reform is needed. Since it was founded in 1994, the retailer has taken extraordinary measures to avoid collecting sales taxes nationwide, although more recently its stance on the subject has been softening. It now collects taxes in more than half a dozen states. Most recently, it agreed to start paying sales tax in Pennsylvania, Texas, California and Connecticut.

Brick-and-mortar retailers have contended for years that Amazon had an unfair advantage because it did not collect sales tax at the time of purchase. (Technically, it is the customers’ responsibility to pay the taxes, but that’s not very practical.)

The Marketplace Fairness Act is being introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and two Republicans, Sens. Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Under the law, states will have two options for simplifying their tax-collection process. Retailers that have less than $1 million $500,000 in out-of-state sales the prior calendar year can apply for exemption.

According to the Marketplace Fairness Act homepage, a long list of companies support the proposal, including Amazon, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble., Gap, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, REI, Sears, Target and Walmart. One of the organizations listed in opposition is eBay.

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

“We are building the Uber for delivery people,” Donahoe said this morning at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, following an appearance by Apple’s Tim Cook. “We think we can do it at scale. No one single retailer can do it on their own, so we are building it for the retail industry and using our technology capabilities to build it.”

His opinions differ drastically from Amazon’s last public statements on the topic. In July, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said the company was building more distribution centers to be closer to customers and to speed up delivery times, “but in terms of same-day delivery, we don’t see a way to do same-day on a broad scale at the moment.”

Donahoe said he believes that there is plenty of unused inventory in today’s delivery systems to make it work. The goal is to be able to bid out each order to the nearest driver, similar to the way Uber taps into a network of town cars looking for their next fare.

So far, eBay is experimenting on a small scale with pilot programs in San Francisco and parts of New York City. The eBay Now app allows you to look for local inventory at several stores, including Macy’s and Walgreens. After an order is placed, the products are delivered within two to four hours (right now, Donahoe said, times are averaging one to two hours).

He said the system doesn’t work for any one retailer on their own, but that it could work by providing the service to a network of companies with many locations. Still, that isn’t stopping other mega merchants, like Walmart, from also experimenting with same-day delivery. The benefit to eBay or Walmart, in general, is that they are relying on inventory located in stores near central locations, unlike Amazon, which owns massive distribution centers often based on the outskirts of town.

Is delivery something that could eventually make money? Donahoe thinks so.

“We are trying to build it, and over time, if we are building value, then the retailers will pay for those leads,” he said.

Now Walmart says it has solved that one, more or less, with software that will let most users handle the “disc to digital” process at home.

Walmart says that, starting this month, users can start storing copies of some of the movies they’ve already purchased on DVDs, using Macs and PCs and its Vudu.com movie service.

You’ll need a computer that still has an optical disc drive for this. So, if you’re working on, say, a MacBook Air, you’re going to have to dig up an older PC, or forage for an external drive.

And you’ll still need to pay for the privilege of using Walmart’s cloud: $2 to convert a standard DVD or Blu-ray, or $5 if you want to convert a standard DVD into an HD copy. That may turn off some people who believe that paying extra for digital copies of stuff they own doesn’t make any sense.

Also note that while many of the big studios, including Sony, Warner Bros, Fox (which, like this site, is owned by News Corp.) and Paramount are in, not all of their films are available for digital storage and playback. So in some cases this will still be a moot point.

Still, the notion of hauling your discs to a store in order to move them onto the Internet made zero sense in 2012. Nice to know that Walmart has caught up in 2013.

Walmart has made other strides, as well. It recently started letting Android users download digital copies of their movies on their devices, instead of requiring them to stream them. And it says that, next month, Apple iOS users will be able to do the same.

Walmart is pushing the service in conjunction with UltraViolet, the Hollywood + tech consortium that’s trying to push movie ownership via a system that’s supposed to let users access any film they buy, on any device. And since Disney isn’t an UltraViolet member, that means none of this applies to Disney and Pixar films, which means a key demographic that would value having multiple copies of the same movie — parents with kids — won’t get as much out of this as Walmart would like.

Still, when Walmart rolled this thing out last March, it looked DOA, and UltraViolet backers have conceded to me privately that it has underwhelmed them, too. Maybe the retailer has done enough to give this thing a second chance.

And it was all my fault.

The fact that Best Buy lost money based on Walmart’s promotion was exposed after it and several other retailers filed complaints against Walmart for false advertising tactics with about a dozen state attorneys general, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In the case of the iPhone 5, Best Buy said it was compelled to match Walmart’s advertised price, even though it “concluded that Walmart didn’t actually have a sufficient number of iPhones available.”

That syncs up with what I reported on Dec. 15 when Walmart’s promotion first went into effect.

On that day, Walmart started offering the iPhone 5 at $127, compared to the original price of $190. It also started selling the iPad for $399, or $100 off. The discounts were only supposed to be available at its supercenters, or about 3,000 stores nationwide.

After calling around to several stores in Washington and California the day the promotion went live, I determined Walmart’s inventory of devices and pricing were wildly inconsistent.

Since it was difficult to find which stores had stock on hand, I recommended going to “one of the many stores that are offering to match the lowest prices this holiday season, including Best Buy and Target.” Over Twitter, at least one person told me that they took the advice and received discounted phones at Best Buy.

Walmart said the false advertising accusations are untrue. According to the WSJ, the company said it shipped double the usual amount of iPhones during the promotion and that the phone was 98 percent in stock at stores that carried the devices.

I hope that means I’m off the hook.

Leszek Glasner / Shutterstock.com

With the end of 2012 approaching, I started to assess what’s happened in the space this year and identified a few areas with the potential to reshape the social landscape. As we move into 2013, a year in which funding appears to be harder to secure, these factors will be instrumental for both start-ups and larger companies alike.

First, the move to mobile has definitely affected interest-based networks. A notable shift was Pinterest’s launch on phones and tablets, but many other start-ups also made a mobile push. Fitocracy, an interest based social network oriented around fitness that was originally Web-only, launched its iPhone app earlier this year, and has seen usage on mobile surge to a huge percentage of its overall engagement and traffic. Thumb, an iPhone and Android-based social network that allows people to ask questions and get instant responses, sees extremely high user engagement through its mobile apps, to the tune of over five hours per month per monthly active user and over 1 billion total yearly responses.

Users are spending lots of time engaging on social media from their mobile devices, but they are discerning and demanding. Consumers want responsive, well-designed mobile apps, and as engagement on mobile continues to grow, social services that nail their mobile experiences will reap the benefits of this momentum.

Brands are looking for a piece of the action on social and mobile

Second, a consistent concern over the year has been the effectiveness of advertising as a revenue driver on new social and mobile platforms. On the eve of the Facebook IPO, GM pulled back from its $10M advertising spend, and they are not the only ones who have doubted Facebook’s plan to drive revenue on mobile. More recently, after a disastrous snafu that released earnings early, Wall Street analysts dropped Google’s share price by nearly 9 percent due to concerns that its mobile ad business would not monetize as well as it did on the Web. These examples underscore a basic concern, namely, mobile and social-oriented networks are not set up to monetize as well as the Web on desktops.

My own view is more optimistic. Certainly social networks will have to refine their offerings for brands. This will likely take experimenting that will result in both good and bad outcomes that focus on solutions that benefit both companies and users. Mark Cuban recently critiqued Facebook’s approach on its Promoted Posts because it failed to reach a balanced solution for both parties. Over time, I expect that the mobile and social spaces will offer new opportunities to advertisers and brands to adapt and connect more effectively with their target markets. This isn’t a broken market; it’s just still in early stages of maturity.

As with any maturing process there are both good and bad examples of how brands can work with social networks. Even on Facebook, which is the most heavily embraced by brands, many are weak in how they connect with fans and followers. For example, I’m a fan of Canon cameras, as are nearly 1.1 million other Facebook users. Visit Canon’s Facebook Fan Page, though, and it’s a ghost town. The last activity on the page I see was from April of this year. It’s ridiculous. Canon is the global market share leader in digital SLR cameras, with over a million fans willing to interact with them on Facebook. Yet the brand shows no evidence of photo contests, no showcasing of products, and lacks recent video demos of its cameras or lenses. Clearly, there are still global brands that haven’t really leveraged Facebook yet.

On the other hand, companies that are finding ways beyond advertising to connect with people encourage me. Walmart, for example, is starting to use Facebook to connect with users and drive business to its stores this holiday season. Here’s one recent example from my own Facebook stream:

This is fun. As a video game nerd, I get pulled in thinking about whether a Halo or WoW toy should be the rollback of the day. Walmart connects with me in an interesting way, and if I engage, the company gets potentially useful data. Walmart is starting to evolve.

The potential for mobile social companies is even larger. Brands see the rising engagement and importance of mobile, and are working to figure out how to leverage it effectively. I look to companies like BlueRun Ventures portfolio company Verve Mobile, that focus on mobile ads targeting users leveraging location data, and see this opening all sorts of new opportunities and campaigns options for brands and advertisers. There is often a misperception that location-based marketing is about catching a consumer as they are in front of the shelf or just walking into the store. On the contrary, there are more creative ways to leverage location that are as insightful as search was to intent. For example, understanding that your target consumer is shopping at competitors’ stores or has visited a number of locations in your category is a strong signal of purchase intent. These are opportunities that weren’t available before smartphones. Couple location with data from social or interest-based graphs, and it becomes a powerful platform.

The fact that the relationship between social and mobile networks and brands is still maturing bodes well for start-ups, as they are nimble enough to test the countless avenues toward revenue. This is especially true for the interest-based social apps and services, which are known to quickly gain users and engagement. Brands are going to be looking for scale and how much time their users spend on the service interacting. By focusing on building a great community, there will be an opportunity to ride the wave of advertising dollars that will inevitably shift into social and mobile as brands adapt. Start-ups also need to think about what an ad unit really means on their service and how they can monetize their brands without compromising their product experience. The aperture for advertising is more important than ever in mobile and it is something that both brands and start-ups need to work together on to get right.

Facebook hasn’t snuffed the competition; the social space continues to evolve

New interest-based networks continue to crop up, some breaking through quite strongly. Pinterest is the obvious leader of the bunch, proven by its ongoing expansion and growth this year. But multiple other interest-based social networks suggest a future that is more diverse and not dominated by one player like Facebook. For example, humor site 9gag exploded in the last 18 months to become a top 500 site globally, according to Web analytics firm Alexa. Fitocracy gives the athlete in us a place to share fitness achievements without sounding like a bore or braggart, and sees its users spending an average of 3.5 hours on the app each month, a number that is second only to Facebook and Thumb in terms of user engagement. Go ask a question on the mobile opinion network, Thumb, and you’ll get more than 50 responses in just a few minutes, as Facebook recently gave up on its foray into question and answer. User appetite for these new services continues to expand.

There are two broad categories of interest-based networks, and both are seeing companies succeed in 2012. One category is verticalized, subject-themed networks such as Foodspotting (food), Rapgenius (rap lyrics), 9Gag (humor), Wedding Party (weddings) and Fitocracy (fitness). The promise of these services is that they deliver value to users in a specific slice of their lives. They create strong, loyal communities that can be valuable targets for brands. The challenge they face in the evolving ecosystem is how to sustain growth and user acquisition given their vertical focus.

The other approach is horizontal: Pinterest, Quora, Path, Thumb and PandaWhale. These services span a broad range of topics, but offer a different interaction model — whether through pinboards in the case of Pinterest, or questions and answers in the cases of Quora and Thumb. These networks have broader audiences that can be spliced into specific targets, but will require large scale to deliver meaningful targets in specific areas (e.g. number of users on Quora that are interested in a particular topic). In this segment, the mechanics for driving engagement and analytics will be very important to delivering advertising targeting and conversion.

Both approaches will likely yield winners. And there are many questions I ask myself when evaluating these companies and looking ahead to 2013. For vertically focused networks, the question will be when and whether those services need to scale into other areas. Will Foodspotting expand to offer Winespotting? Will Wedding Party extend into Baby Shower Party? And will the users follow?

For horizontal services, the question is how to extend the entire platform more broadly, to make it more mainstream. Pinterest has seemingly crossed this chasm. Some have questioned whether Quora will do so, though I’m extremely confident it will.

Looking back on what has shaped the ecosystem to this point, it is impossible to ignore the effect continued growth on mobile and increased interest from brands will have on the current batch of social contenders in 2013, new and old. The goal is to deliver a service that adds value to users, builds a community, and helps power users and key contributors gain recognition and notoriety. But the path to success will be varied. I will say that from my vantage point as an investor that, heading into 2013, if mobile doesn’t factor very heavily into the approach of an interest-based social network, then I’m not interested. Skate to where the puck is going is the lesson here.

Jay Jamison is a Partner at BlueRun Ventures, who focuses on early stage mobile, consumer and enterprise investments. He also serves on the boards of AppCentral (acquired by Good Technology), AppRedeem, Foodspotting, and Thumb. You can follow Jay on Twitter @jay_jamison or read his blog at www.jayjamison.com.

If so, you’re in luck. There are a handful of options for getting packages delivered in time for Christmas, especially if you live in one of the markets where retailers are testing same-day delivery services.

In case you didn’t already know, today was pretty much the deadline for consumers to place orders online and to reasonably expect their packages to arrive on time. For example, Sears, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Walmart and even Amazon stopped offering rush shipping this afternoon on most orders.

As I previously reported, last week was the peak for e-commerce spending, and this year that shouldn’t be any different. But there are a number of ways to still get deliveries sent to your home if you don’t feel like fighting the crowds at the mall.

Amazon is promising on-time deliveries for some orders placed on Saturday and Sunday for some items in select cities. But it won’t be free. For those with Amazon Prime, it will cost $4 and up — on top of the $79 you pay every year to be a member.

Then there’s same-day delivery. Though the services are being characterized as tests, these merchants are trying to see if it can be economical to deliver items that are kept locally at stores (and not at distant warehouses) to homes within a few hours. It’s clearly another strategy for brick-and-mortar retailers to try to compete with e-tailers that offer the convenience of delivery.

Two of the major trials are being conducted by eBay and Walmart.

EBay’s service is called eBay Now. Consumers can place orders from a mobile app that will deliver goods to you at your home, in a park, even at a bar, within about an hour. The company is working with a number of local retailers on the service, including Target, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Toys “R” Us and Bloomingdales.

According to an eBay spokeswoman, eBay Now will be available from 9 am to 6 pm (local time) on Christmas Eve, but closed on Christmas Day. The service is currently being tested in San Francisco and parts of New York City.

Walmart is another retailer that is testing same-day delivery. The “Walmart to Go” service allows customers in a handful of markets to buy and receive items on the same day for $10. Inventory is limited to popular items, including toys, electronics, sporting goods and other gifts. The service is in Northern Virginia, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, the San Jose-San Francisco Bay Area and Denver.

Walmart will be offering same-day delivery until Dec. 23, but will be closed on Dec. 24 and 25. It will resume on Dec. 26.

There are smaller alternatives, too.

For example, TaskRabbit is a marketplace where you can find people who are willing to complete small projects or services for a fee. The service operates in a number of major markets around the country, and due to its independent nature, a spokesman claims, “The Web site and iPhone app are never closed.”

In fact, once a “rabbit” has received a background check and activated, “they can work when they want, and not when they don’t.” Popular tasks this month include holiday shopping, which is averaging $57; gift wrapping, $38; and hanging lights, $85. If that sounds exorbitant, remember that consumers should expect to pay a premium on holidays.

Finally, another service in San Francisco is Postmates, which is offering same-day delivery by dispatching a nearby courier to run an errand. A spokeswoman confirmed that it is operating on Christmas Eve from 8 am to 6 pm, and on Christmas Day from 11 am to midnight.

Additionally, as part of the iPhone app, Postmates is creating a shopping guide that lists major retailers where last-minute purchases can be made, including the likes of Apple, Tiffany, Uniqlo and Nordstrom.

While there seem to be a lot of last-minute options, Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru said that this year is no different from other years in at least one sense. Retailers, and especially e-commerce companies, are always trying to push the limits when it comes to how late orders can be placed.

“It does drive a spike in sales as you approach the shipping deadline. I’d estimate a 20 percent lift on that day over an average holiday day, but by no means would it eclipse the Thanksgiving weekend or Cyber Monday,” she said.

Of course, if you miss all of these options, there are always gift cards. And there’s still the local mall.

Walmart is slashing the price of a few iPhone and iPad models — including Apple’s flagship iPhone 5 — in 3,000 stores, reports Reuters.

The 16 gigabyte iPhone 5 will cost $127, compared to the original price of $190 (with a two-year contract from Verizon Wireless, Sprint or AT&T). Wal-Mart is also selling the 16GB iPhone 4S for $47 — nearly half off. The 16GB iPad with Wi-Fi will cost $399, or $100 off.

Interestingly, the 30-day promotion has Apple’s blessing. A Walmart spokeswoman told Retuers that the discounts were arranged with Apple. But, after making a few inquiries, the discounts proved difficult to find in a handful of locations in Washington and California.

I was told that the iPhone is only carried at Walmart Supercenters, which, if true, should make the hunt easier, since there are only 3,100 supercenters in the U.S., roughly the equivalent number of stores where Walmart is supposedly offering the discounts. Instead, I found the inventory and prices to be wildly inconsistent.

My advice, if you plan on taking on the challenge, is be patient. It takes awhile to find the correct person in electronics to answer your question on the phone, and hold times can be long. In one case, I was hung up on; in another extreme case, a representative simply told me that the iPhone 5 would cost “a lot.”

After calling the stores close to my home, I found that some only carried phones for Verizon Wireless and sometimes AT&T, but never Sprint. Additionally, inventory was limited to the 16GB iPhone 5, with none carrying the higher-capacity 32GB model.

Finally, after calling two stores in the San Francisco area, I found one Supercenter that was selling the iPhone at a discount. The Walmart in American Canyon, Calif. said the phone from Verizon Wireless would cost $127 with a two-year contract, but the iPad remained at its original price of $499. The Supercenter in Napa continued to charge full price for all the devices.

Here’s one idea: To save time and the headache of calling around, go to one of the many stores that are offering to match the lowest prices this holiday season, including Best Buy and Target, which have both vowed to honor some competitors’ prices. Perhaps you’ll have better luck there.

While I have already spelled out a number of reasons why he might be let go, here’s one reason why he should stay: On Black Friday, Groupon said it saw almost twice the purchase rate of its previous busiest day on record.

Call it an early present for Mason, who also learned yesterday that he is keeping his job as CEO — at least, for now.

This year, Groupon is putting an especially heavy emphasis on holiday gifts, after launching physical goods on the site more than a year ago. While coupons for restaurants and spas also sell well this time of year, physical gifts are more traditionally considered presents.

Yesterday, Groupon said its physical products division, Groupon Goods, celebrated its biggest four-day weekend since the program’s inception. Put another way, over the seven days after Thanksgiving in North America, Groupon generated double the gross billings from last year, with essentially all of the growth attributable to Groupon Goods, according to Yipit, a third-party data provider.

Top sellers included customizable photo books, iPhone cases, Topaz earrings and flying toy helicopters, which sold 43,000, 40,000, 42,000 and 11,000 units, respectively.

While an increase in sales is always a good thing, Groupon has received some static about its entrance into selling physical goods, which have thinner margins than local deals. It also means entering an extremely competitive landscape with well-established players, like Walmart and Amazon, although clearly it has demonstrated it can sell thousands of items fairly easily.

At least two promotions helped Groupon see a huge spike in the sale of Goods over the weekend. Yipit said that following Thanksgiving, the homepage redirected visitors to Groupon.com/goods (although it’s back to directing people to their local markets). Additionally, Groupon rolled out Grouponicus, the company’s third annual wintertime promotion, which offers customers gift ideas. For the first time this year, it offered a holiday toy catalog and free shipping and returns.

Groupon’s close competitor LivingSocial, which is facing its own turmoil, also saw a lift this year during the Thanksgiving week, although not as much since it’s still in the early days of building out its products division. In North America, for the week following Thanksgiving, Yipit said LivingSocial revenues jumped 30 percent. In particular, Yipit said sales from products were up roughly 5 percent, with a bump over the past few days coming from a partnership with Fab.com. (Separately, Fab said today it averaged $933,500 in daily sales for a week straight).

Still, one thing on Mason’s wish list that he has not received is a higher stock price. While shares were trading higher recently on news that he might be replaced, shares are now down 8.8 percent, or 40 cents, to trade at $4.14 a share.

According to yet another online shopping survey for the holiday shopping season, this one from comScore, people are buying a lot more online than last year.

I know this people-buying-stuff-online thing must come as a shock to those who have been living in a cave for several years now.

For those with an Internet connection, though, sales rose to $1.04 billion on Black Friday, an increase of 26 percent over last year. It is the first time that Web purchasing for the important retailing day was over $1 billion, with 57.3 million consumers visiting online stores.

The entire amount of 2012 online holiday spending from the beginning of November until now, according to comScore, has been $13.7 billion. It is a 16 percent rise, but still a drop in the bucket compared to bricks-and-mortar retailing.

But, according to a statement from a comScore guy, “We continue to see this shopping day become more and more prominent in the e-commerce channel — particularly among those who prefer to avoid crowds at the stores.”

People don’t like being jostled at a mall when they can sit at home and buy more things on a couch. Imagine that!

Amazon was where the most action was among online retailing, followed by Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Apple. Auction site eBay was excluded from this group.

And, if you can bear any more stats, here is a chart from ChannelAdvisor on online sales:

In the physical retail world, it’s the equivalent of putting up Christmas displays and piping in carols over the sound system before Thanksgiving, maybe even before Halloween.

This year, e-tailers are jumping the gun in an effort to get a bigger share of your wallet by announcing sales as much as a week before such traditionally heavy online shopping days as Black Friday and Cyber Monday (the Friday and Monday following Thanksgiving, respectively).

Two of the biggest retailers in the U.S. are exemplifying this trend with rival releases this morning:

Walmart said today that it is kicking off Cyber Week this year on Saturday, Nov. 24, and lasting through Sunday, Dec. 2. Specials will be available online and refreshed daily, with customers enjoying free shipping on more than 100,000 items. Meanwhile, Amazon said its Black Friday deals are starting today and running through Saturday. “We’re offering customers our widest selection of Black Friday Lightning Deals ever and we’re bringing doorbuster deals to shoppers earlier this year,” said Ben Hartman, Amazon’s VP of consumer electronics.

There are signs that consumers are responding to the early offers:

• PayPal, which claims to process nearly one-fifth of global e-commerce, said today that the official U.S. shopping season started as early as Sept. 30.
• Fab.com said today that sales from its 2012 holiday shopping are up 400 percent versus its holiday business this time a year ago.
• Chase Holiday Pulse data, which tracks data from 50 large e-commerce retailers, is finding that year-over-year sales volume is up 12.3 percent over 2011. Some days, like Nov. 11, were up more than 50 percent.

But many of the busiest days are yet to come. UPS is preparing for Thursday, Dec. 20, when the logistics company estimates it will deliver 28 million packages around the world, compared to its average day of 15.8 million packages. This holiday is expected to be a record-breaking year for UPS, which is forecasting that it will deliver 527 million packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas, surpassing last year’s total of 480 million.

New York-based Birchbox said it is adding Birchbox Home, a package of home decor and entertaining products, such as cocktail party supplies, kitchen tools and gourmet foods. Products will be sourced from companies like Jonathan Adler, Dean and Deluca and Paperless Post.

The limited edition box will cost $58 for more than 11 products and is being timed with the holidays, when lots of people are hosting parties. An online shop will offer more than 50 products for one-off purchases. Birchbox regularly sells beauty and lifestyle boxes targeting both men and women.

Brit + Co.’s box requires people to be a little more industrious. The Brit Kits will be available for $20 a month and come with a couple different mini projects that are designed to take 30 minutes each. In November, the box will come loaded with a Turkey Oreo-pop making kit (basically a turkey made of Oreos and candy on a stick), and a kit that lets you turn a regular pair of gloves into ones that can be used with a touchscreen device using conductive thread.

The kits will also be for individual sale on the Web site, but will cost $15 each, or slightly more when not part of a subscription.

The launch of the two boxes fuels the well-established trend of sending products to consumers on a monthly basis. Oftentimes, the purpose of the box is to help consumers discover new items. Walmart is one of the latest companies to experiment with the concept, launching something it calls Goodies.co earlier this week. But there are literally hundreds of options out there.

In the case of Brit + Co., it is creating a new way to monetize its Web site, part of its effort to build a media brand like Martha Stewart.

“I’m personally a subscriber of a handful of boxes,” said Brit + Co.’s Founder Brit Morin. “We are all so busy, the act of discovery or decision-making takes a lot of time. This is a way to have people you trust give something to you every month. For us, it’s entertainment, as well as keeping your creativity alive.”

Untraditional as it may be, the airplane is one way I routinely discover new snack foods. Another trendy way is subscription commerce, which gets consumers to sign up for a monthly box that comes loaded with a handful of products for a fee. The business model has been applied to an exhaustive list of categories: Makeup, coffee, food, kids’ toys and crafts (check out subscriptionboxes.com to get even more ideas).

Now Walmart is experimenting with the concept, too. Today it launches Goodies Co., a monthly service that will send you a package of sweets and snacks for $7, including shipping. The twist on this particular offering is something that the megaretailer does best — pricing things unbelievably low.

Other services charge anywhere from $12 to $30. For instance, the Knoshbox, aimed at foodies, costs $30; Love With Food offers a monthly rate of $12; and Sprig offers a mini-snack plan of 10 to 13 items for $26.95.

Goodies, which is coming out of beta today, is being run entirely by @WalmartLabs, Walmart’s tech team in San Bruno, Calif. While it continues in the experiment phase (as evidenced by not using the Walmart brand yet), the employees at @WalmartLabs will curate and source the brands — even though Walmart stores represent the largest grocer in the country.

Ravi Raj, VP of products for @WalmartLabs, said they looked at the subscription space and decided it was ripe for innovation, particularly on one front: “Pricing aggressively.”

For example, the October Goodies box came loaded with a number of items, including a single-serving fruit snack, a delectable snack pack of Nutella spread with dipping sticks, and some more oddball items, like coconut-flavored chips and crunchy brownies that tasted like Oreos. Raj said that the box, which will have six to eight items every month, is actually worth closer to $15, or double what they are charging.

Goodies also has a marketplace, like most subscription services, where consumers can come back to order. It also has a social community, where subscribers can post reviews to earn loyalty points. The points will be redeemable for free boxes or to buy items in the marketplace in the future. Subscribers can also upload pictures or share recipes.

Goodies has been beta over the past few months, and Raj said half of the 3,000 customers were writing reviews, and a third of them wrote reviews for almost every item in the box. “That’s great market research for suppliers,” he said, which may be why a brand would want to participate. Another one is more sales: “One of the most frequently asked questions,” he said, “is where can I buy it?”

An impressive sum, and one large enough to make Apple the most valuable retailer per square foot in the United States for the second year in a row. By comparison, Tiffany & Co., the second most profitable American retailer by the same measure, earned $3,017 — less than half of Apple’s take.

In terms of highest overall sales per store, Apple placed a bit lower in the Retail Sails rankings. It came in ninth, behind outfits like Costco, Sam’s Club and Walmart. But the fact that it even made it into a top 10 ranking dominated by wholesale retailers is noteworthy.

Apple has built quite a retail empire for itself in the 11 years since it opened its first store amid some harsh skepticism. As David Goldstein, president of researcher Channel Marketing, said at the time, “I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake.”

Goldstein couldn’t have been more wrong. Today, Apple has about 390 stores worldwide and plans to open another 33 or so next year. And they are taking in money hand over fist.

As Yankee Group Vice President Carl Howe said of the Apple Store’s performance, “Apple’s retail sales figures are nothing short of astronomical. In a world where Tiffany sells diamonds and manages annual revenues of roughly $3,017 per square foot according to RetailSails.com, Apple’s retail stores average twice that. Said another way, Apple products are more valuable than diamonds — at least to the retail trade.”

Okay, that’s maybe a stretch, but the gist of Howe’s comment is right on. Remember that $6,050 per square foot is an average and that Apple’s flagship stores generate considerably more. “Back in 2010 or so, the flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York alone was estimated to be selling $350 million in revenue per year, and it is only a 10,000 square foot store,” Howe told AllThingsD. “Doing the math, you discover its sales rate was $35,000 per square foot, although Apple has never confirmed those figures.”

Walmart said this morning that it has started offering customers in four markets the chance to buy and receive items on the same day, for $10. The inventory will be limited to “popular general merchandise items,” including toys, electronics, sporting goods and other gifts. It has launched “Walmart To Go” in Northern Virginia, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, and the San Jose-San Francisco area is coming by November. No minimum orders are required.

On its July earnings call, Amazon downplayed the idea of same-day delivery, saying it could not scale economically. In contrast, eBay has been bullish on the concept, and is testing a same-day delivery service in San Francisco. There’s also a host of other start-ups entering the space, including Postmates and UPS-backed Shutl.

Walmart said that, in a customer survey, a majority of respondents said they would consider same-day delivery if the option was available to them. More than half said they would use this feature monthly or more frequently.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp., 7-Eleven Inc. and Sunoco Inc. are among the companies hoping to elbow their way into the burgeoning market that turns smartphones into devices for making purchases.

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