Black Friday Phone Deals: Carriers vs. Best Buy, Target, WalMart, Amazon

When it comes to Black Friday deals, we do not normally see the likes of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon enter into this seasonal frenzy. However, this is a different story for third-party marketers, such as Amazon, Best Buy, Target and Walmart.

These retailers who sell these authorized phones and contracts do so on behalf of the carriers, with prices much lower than the carriers themselves. These deals will be even lower on Black Friday 2009, as retailers fight each other for shoppers.

Many of you may not have heard of Wirefly, but they are the company that supplies Web services to Best Buy, Radio Shack and Target, this means that the cell phone deals are actually coming from Wirefly. Wal-Mart use someone different, LetsTalk.com. Amazon has already started some great deals, one being the Palm Pixi for just $25.

The New York Times explains why they think that these third-part operators can offer greater deals than the larger carriers. The reason is simple, less overheads. There is no advertising to pay and no stores to keep running, so they can just concentrate on offering great deals.

Let us know if you plan to get one of the many cell phone deals this Black Friday.