Online holiday shopping sparkles
( 2001-12-27 12:37 ) (7 )

Fears of a dismal online holiday shopping season appeared to lift on Wednesday, as major e-commerce players such as Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. reported strong online sales growth during November and December.

Yahoo said holiday sales on its shopping Web sites rose 86 percent from a year ago, while Microsoft said its MSN network of Internet services showed sales growth of 56 percent.

The news from the two companies, along with optimistic comments from Wall Street analysts, lifted online retailing stocks, which have been battered by the U.S. economic recession and shaky consumer confidence.

Amazon.com Inc., which runs the most popular online retail site, soared $1.33, or 13.5 percent, to $11.16. Microsoft rose $1.51 to $68.78 on Nasdaq.

Both Yahoo and MSN said consumer electronics, such as digital cameras and portable music players, were among the hottest sellers.

Neither of the companies operates online stores themselves. Instead they host the stores of others and collect fees or take a cut of the revenue.

Meanwhile, analysts were still tabulating overall online sales in November and December, but the consensus is that more dollars were spent online in this holiday season than last year's.