MarketWatch reports that shopping by cellphone seems to have come into its own this weekend:

Black Friday saw tremendous use of mobile phones by consumers to zero in on and make purchases, industry data reviewed by Dow Jones show.

From a very small base last year, mobile online payments through PayPal surged nearly 650%, said Amanda Pires, senior director of marketing at the online payment service.

(snip)

Searches from mobile devices jumped from around 5,000 on Black Friday in 2008 to roughly 200,000 this year, said Siva Kumar, chief executive of TheFind.com, a product search engine.

I wouldn’t know.

You wouldn’t catch me shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving at anything more crowded than a 7-11.

At the same time, I can see it. It’s a handy way to do price comparisons and quality checks while on-the-go.

We did go out today, Saturday, to get a new wireless router. The mall we went to was not particularly busy, but, in fairness, it is an older mall whose time is pretty much past. Come to think of it, it was a lot busier than the last time I went there on a Tuesday.

The most difficult time was shaking the whippersnapper in Radio Shack, who took a while to realize I had forgotten more about routers than he knew.