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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NPD released November sales results today showing the best monthly performance year- to-date in 2009. Total revenue tracked through our Retail Tracking Service was flat with November 2008 and represented the first non-negative month of the year. That is the top-line story, but, the intricacies about how this happened (finally!!) are interesting as well.
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As flat-panel technologies made TVs thin enough to tempt Jenny Craig into becoming a CE retailer, consumers found that they could not only put them in places that had been impractical before (such as on walls), but also fit more TV into less space. This was further facilitated by the relatively light weight of large flat-panel TVs, which made them easier to transport home from the store or ship from an online retailer. Indeed, according to NPD’s recent 2009 TV Inventory Study, nearly one-in-five televisions that consumers own is 40″ or larger.
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Even though the holiday selling season isn’t over yet, it doesn’t feel unnatural to start setting expectations for 2009. As much as 2008 was a stress test for the electronics industry, 2009 is likely to raise our anxiety levels further and require even more constant monitoring than we needed last year to avoid heart failure.
Undoubtedly the first half of 2009 will be miserable, and not just because the first half of almost every year is miserable. NPD’s Consumer Spending Indicator does not provide much room for optimism. While we don’t offer forecasts, we can offer a bit of guidance/observations on some key signposts to watch for in the first half of the year that might provide some clue as to the level of anxiety to expect in the back half.
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Consumer Technology | Stephen Baker, Vice President, Industry Analysis | 
January 12, 2010 11:53 am | 
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