At the iPad unveiling in San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced a milestone for the company he co-founded in 1976. Apple has turned 50… billion dollars in annual revenue. And to kick off its next growth opportunity, its super sized iPod seeks to fill the gap between the smartphone and laptop, a gap that has become an abyss for many.
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NPD today released some good news about sales to small and medium business through the reseller channel, what us old timers used to call the DMR (direct marketing reseller) channel. Sales in December were very strong, posting growth of 7 percent year-over-year, the first time this segment has shown positive growth in more than 15 months.
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Apple just finished introducing their latest product; the iPad. Small, slick, typically great looking, and well priced at $499 it is an interesting, but ultimately not breakthrough device. In fact it reminds one very much of a netbook. A companion device to your main computer (or iPod in this case) that allows you to have a more focused web experience and a more media-centric device at a lower price, which is much of what the netbook is evolving towards.
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Given all the outlandish rumors circulating around Apple’s forthcoming announcement on Wednesday, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the purported Apple tablet can become transparent and levitate. Indeed, it is otherwise difficult to explain how the device was able to hover above the CES show floor, invisible to everyone’s eyes but prominent in everyone’s imagination.
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Having come back from the holidays and CES to a mailbox full of “Decade In Review” articles in my email in-box, I decided to jump on board. From the dawn of digital music, through iPod nation, Wii, High Definition, social networking, and smartphones (with apps), it may have been an unparalleled ten years for entertainment.
Which got me thinking about the teens.
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This year’s CES was four days of meetings, events, booth tours, and crowds as it is every year. But this year’s show was, unlike last year, imbued with a sense of optimism and opportunity that was absent in 2009. At times even the most innovative and interesting products can get lost in a sea of product demos, displays, and PR hype. And while knowing what is new and noteworthy is the first question people ask me, it is often the last thing I care about. Because, it’s not what’s on the show floor that’s always most important, it’s what ends up in consumers’ homes, sooner rather than later, that counts because that’s where the money is. And what’s new, innovative, and different at CES is often a bit away from hitting the store shelves or being relevant to a mainstream consumer.
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During some of my “kid-oriented” presentations, I will often talk about some of the things that we adults can still remember, but that kids of today have never been exposed to - like rotary-dialed phones or 8-track tapes. I was reminded of this recently when I had my car in for service and was given a loaner for the day, and the car actually had manual roll-down windows. My kids had no clue how to operate them, and a verbal explanation wouldn’t do - I had to visually demonstrate the hand-cranking method for them as they stared on in disbelief.
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NPD’s Weekly Tracking Service showed consumer technology revenue for the 2009 five week holiday period was down slightly less than 1 percent, year-over-year. While that result is far from the halcyon days of the mid-decade, it is a far better performance than 2008’s 6 percent decline. The real highlight though is a tale of two categories, PCs and TVs. PC sales were as strong as we have ever seen, with notebook unit volume up almost 70 percent and desktops (yes, desktops !!!) up nearly 30 percent. TVs, on the other hand, were a drag on revenue growth despite a 30 percent increase in unit volume.
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I fondly remember the things my parents used to say whenever we complained about things, like walking a quarter of a mile down the street to the bus stop for school. “When I was a kid, I walked three miles to school, through a snowstorm,” was one of my all-time favorites. And, of course, as most of us have, I vowed never to say these types of things to my own kids. And like most of us, I have failed miserably at keeping this promise.
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Consumer Technology | Ross Rubin, Executive Director, Industry Analysis | 
January 28, 2010 2:24 pm | 
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