I guess it's obligatory that we in the analyst and press community need to come up with our "Top-Whatever" lists of the key trends, key products, etc. from either the year just ending or for 2009. It definitely does help to distill the main news and hot items for the year into some easily digestible deliverables ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show next week. In fact, the Parks Associates' analysts got together a couple of weeks ago to deliver a Webcast titled 2008: A Digital Lifestyles Year in Review, and I'll be delivering a Webcast on January 22 titled Key Trends in Consumer Electronics that will focus on the big things we saw and heard at CES.

It's easier of course to make some well-educated guesses about what's about to happen with good data available. That's why we're so active in our consumer research. And, when you look at a company like Retrevo, they've got a wealth of information available to them about what consumers are looking for in consumer electronics. The company does a lot for the buying public, but basically, they distill the tons of information, reviews, prices, etc. about a host of CE products and deliver the information to likely buyers in a much more manageable way. I think highly of what Retrevo does, and blogged about them in 2007 as I discussed how I think customer support for the digital home will evolve beyond just fixing broken products and services after they are purchased/installed and become a much more holistic offering that includes things like pre-purchase advice and suggestions for upgrades to existing products. In this way, retailers, service providers, and product manufactuers can play a much more proactive role in providing solutions to their customers at all stages of the buying and support process. It's an addition to a Customer Support Lifecyle notion that is pictured at the beginning of this blog.

Retrevo has some cool features that leverage the data it's able to collect about the CE buying public. In October, they announced Retrevo Pulse™. This consists of the CE Price Index™, CE Demand Index™ and a real-time product buzz ticker. The indices track daily price and demand trends for consumer electronics by product category and in aggregate based on data for more than 4,000 products across 40 categories, such as HDTV’s, digital cameras and laptop computers.

In yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, Retrevo is noted as using its data to name the most sought-after consumer electronics products of 2008 and predicting the winners and losers in 2009. Retrevo put out their own press release on their Retrevo Pulse Awards. These commendations go to products "that have been recognized for high quality, generating a high level of demand among consumers, rich feature sets, and most importantly, high value."
Best products for 2008 - based on quality, value and consumer demand - include specific models of Samsung and Panasonic LCD TVs, Canon and Nikon digital cameras, a Garmin Nuvi Global Positioning System device and an Asus Eee PC.
Hot products for 2009 will be home theater systems, netbooks, digital cameras, high-definition televisions and Blu-ray DVD players, Jain said, partly because people are buying them over the holidays despite the bad economy and partly because these products will continue to technically advance.