Amazon just kicked off its October Prime Day event - officially called Big Deal Days but universally known as Fall Prime Day. The two-day shopping bonanza runs through October 8th, featuring major discounts on Apple MacBooks, Google Pixels, and tech essentials as retailers prep for holiday season warfare.
Amazon's October Prime Day just went live, and the e-commerce giant is making one thing crystal clear - they own the deal season naming game. Officially dubbed "Big Deal Days," absolutely nobody is calling it that. It's Fall Prime Day, October Prime Day, or as WIRED puts it, "Prime Day Part Deux" for the cinephiles.
The timing couldn't be more strategic. Amazon is using this 48-hour window to kick off the holiday shopping season before Black Friday chaos takes over. Early data shows the company is going aggressive on tech, with some of the steepest discounts we've seen since July's main Prime Day event.
The star of the show is Apple's brand-new MacBook Air with M4 chip, now selling for $799 - a solid $200 off its $999 retail price. That's significant because Apple rarely sees this kind of discount so soon after launch. The M4 MacBook Air only hit shelves earlier this year, and WIRED's review gave it a 9/10 rating, with the only complaint being single-side charging.
The smartphone wars are heating up too. Google's Pixel 9a dropped to $349 (down $150), while the Nothing Phone (3) fell to $699 - a $100 cut that puts pressure on Samsung and other Android competitors to respond quickly.
What's telling is how Amazon is positioning this against traditional retail. The company spent "several weeks combing embargoed spreadsheets" according to internal sources, suggesting they're treating this like a military operation against brick-and-mortar stores preparing for Black Friday.
Mesh networking gear is seeing deep cuts too - the ASUS ZenWiFi AX6600 system dropped from $330 to $200, a 39% discount that signals Amazon's push into smart home infrastructure ahead of the holiday gift-giving season.
The broader strategy here is about market timing. Amazon knows that October sales can capture early holiday shoppers before they commit to Black Friday weekend plans. By branding it as "Prime Day" - even unofficially - they're leveraging the psychological trigger that made their July event a $12.7 billion success.
