First bits from CES: $999 42-inch plasmas for Black Friday?
I'm still waiting for Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association to speak, but I thought I'd pass on a few of the bits I've gotten from the CES preview press conference today.
Sean Wargo, the director of industry analysis for the CEA gave a great presentation on the trends in CE, which he boiled down into two nice concise bullets:
Now I'm sure someone out there is going, "How's that?" Well, here's a clue: based upon the CEA's survey of 1,000 consumers and a second survey of 2,000 consumers through CNET, the #1 planned gift for Christmas 2005 is an MP3 player, specifically, an Apple iPod. Now in the olden days, that gift was likely to be a $50 CD player, and now it's a $300 or $400 iPod. Yes, prices are going up.
What's another big gift item? Plasma displays. Now TV sales are down this year about 5% in units. But the category in general is up about 7% in dollars because of high-priced digital TVs, preferably flat ones. The result: the CE industry is making more money on the same number of units sold.
Now what's even more curious about this behavior is that those same consumers are very pessimistic about the economy -- 61% believe that the economy is worse this year than last, while only 11% consider it better. That's the worst attitudinal result in 12 years of surveys. Know why? It's those pesky fuel prices and cost increases from the hurricanes that Blackfriars warned about last summer. So we may see serious promotions coming on Black Friday -- the Friday after Thanksgiving. Sean speculated that we may see some 42-inch plasma TVs (almost certainly third tier EDTVs) going for $999 in the circulars on Black Friday.
So there's three things to remember from CES preview so far:
Sean Wargo, the director of industry analysis for the CEA gave a great presentation on the trends in CE, which he boiled down into two nice concise bullets:
- Healthy (CE) industry
- Dreary consumers
Now I'm sure someone out there is going, "How's that?" Well, here's a clue: based upon the CEA's survey of 1,000 consumers and a second survey of 2,000 consumers through CNET, the #1 planned gift for Christmas 2005 is an MP3 player, specifically, an Apple iPod. Now in the olden days, that gift was likely to be a $50 CD player, and now it's a $300 or $400 iPod. Yes, prices are going up.
What's another big gift item? Plasma displays. Now TV sales are down this year about 5% in units. But the category in general is up about 7% in dollars because of high-priced digital TVs, preferably flat ones. The result: the CE industry is making more money on the same number of units sold.
Now what's even more curious about this behavior is that those same consumers are very pessimistic about the economy -- 61% believe that the economy is worse this year than last, while only 11% consider it better. That's the worst attitudinal result in 12 years of surveys. Know why? It's those pesky fuel prices and cost increases from the hurricanes that Blackfriars warned about last summer. So we may see serious promotions coming on Black Friday -- the Friday after Thanksgiving. Sean speculated that we may see some 42-inch plasma TVs (almost certainly third tier EDTVs) going for $999 in the circulars on Black Friday.
So there's three things to remember from CES preview so far:
- We're spending more this Christmas for the same number of CE units
- iPods are the #1 gifts for Christmas, and
- Look for $999 42-inch plasma sales as a way to get consumers primed on Black Friday
Technorati Tags: Apple, CES, Consumer Electronics Show, Games, Gaming, iPod, LCD, Marketing, Music, Plasma, TV, Video iPod, XBox 360
posted by Carl Howe at
4:35 PM
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