Blog articles from 12/2008

Here's a follow-up to last week's blog regarding CEA's take on Black Friday and the fourth quarter outlook for consumer electronics sales. Given the "seismic" changes to consumer buying habits in late Q3 and early Q4, it's no surprise that CEA has now revised its wholesale shipment revenues for Q4 from 3.5% to 0.1% growth. New data, CEA notes, "shows the economy and consumer sentiment remain muted and CEA surveys show overall spending is down this holiday season."...

Refined business models will control network use and yield more revenue -- The tremendous growth of mobile broadband usage, with annual growth rates of 200% in parts of North America and upwards of 800% in parts of Europe, will create future challenges for service providers if not properly managed. A new custom study from Parks Associates, Mobile Broadband in North America and Europe: Change is Key to Continuing Profitability, found that many carriers rely on outdated business...

Last night’s trial run of an NFL broadcast in 3D was not without hiccups, but nonetheless an exciting experience, so we are told. Four experiences over the past year have convinced me that 3D will land in our living rooms within the next two years. First, while at last year’s CES, TI was demonstrating 3D programming on two DLP TV models. The experience was very impressive, but more amazing was to hear all 16 people in the demo area say “wow” at the same time. This spring I...

For all the talk of wireless HD and questions surrounding the pros and cons of Wi-Fi, 5 GHz, 60 GHz, and UWB solution, Western Digital has offered up the WD TV HD Media Player. Basically, USB drives, digital cameras, camcorders, and portable media players that can be recognized as mass storage devices can be plugged into this device and then played on the TV. Western Digital announced this product on Monday with this press release.

I had the chance to attend CEA's Webcast this afternoon Holiday Update and Post Black Friday Analysis . They indicated that 54% of Black Friday buyers purchased consumer electronics products. CEA says that 2.2 million Blu-ray players have been shipped (purchased) so far this year, and that we're on track to hit 2.75 million units before year-end. I've been more conservative on Blu-ray players, forecasting 2.35 million sales for all of North America for 2008, but it would be nice to...

There were several news headlines regarding the mobile phone industry in the past couple of days. First, Nokia launched its N97 touch-screen smartphone yesterday and touted as the most revolutionary mobile internet device. Indeed, the specs are quite impressive: 5-megapixel camera, 32GB internal memory, tri-band HSDPA 3G, flash in the browser, and a 3.5-inch touch screen, etc. The price tag is eye-popping too—around $700. Separately, news from the U.K said that T-Mobile UK started to...

Great - now our consumer electronics products are giving us a complex. CNN reports today on "TiVo Guilt," where TV viewers who record shows on their DVRs feel an obligation to watch every single episode recorded and suffer guilt when cleaning out unwatched shows. It got me thinking about the state of my TiVo and TV watching for the past few months. If I had to count the number of shows that we watch pretty regularly on a weekly basis, I'd say it's probably 5-6. There are...

Here's a follow-up to the post from last week regarding consumers' purchase intentions for electronics products this holiday season. I saw a few articles yesterday that quantified what Black Friday meant for consumer electronics sales: What Did Consumers Buy? From TWICE : 39% of shoppers bought DVDs, CDs, video games and books; and Nearly 36% of consumers purchased consumer electronics How Did Apple Products Do? From CNET:...