CES 2012 Press Day Full of Developments

Before The 2012 International CES even officially started there were some interesting developments on press day.
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CES 2012: Ten’s A Crowd

The first big news of CES happened when Vizio announced its intention to enter the notebook and AIO desktop markets in the middle of 2012. They would join an exhaustive list of companies selling PCs to consumers through U.S. retail. In fact they would be the 10th company of note (although there are even more brands than that) to have a presence on the U.S. retail shelf.
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A Glass Half Full

NPD has released its Consumer Technology Black Friday week sales data, and based on my analysis I think the most reasonable conclusion is to view the results as a glass being half full. Yes, the overall sales (in dollars) were down, but the pockets of strength we saw were surprising, and in my view encouraging, at least if are willing to look beyond Dec 25th.

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The Big Yawn

Having just returned from my annual Black Friday morning shopping trip I am struggling to suppress a yawn. Not just because I got up at 2:45AM, but because I have to confess, once again, that I just didn’t see anything as I shopped today that either changes my general outlook on the holiday for tech or provides a window into how aggressively consumers may be shopping for electronics. As I said last year, giving away highly-desirable products in limited quantities for outrageously low prices is always going to draw a crowd. However, at some point you begin to bump into the realities of installed bases, low prices, and relevancy. This year’s struggle to determine what the most relevant, most exciting products to sell was especially acute and I believe will lead to lackluster results, similar to what we’ve seen all year.
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I Own An iPad, So What Do I do With It?

NPD has released the second in its series of iPad surveys. While the first looked at buying intentions prior to the launch this one is more focused on what the current ownership looks like and how those owners are using their iPad. In conjunction with the press release we thought we would add some color around the iPad experience, bypassing some of the more contentious product based discussions out there. The survey provided some in-depth information on all aspects of the iPad, but today we are going to look at two distinct areas. First, is what owners like and dislike about their iPads, and second is how consumers are using their iPad.

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Reseller Sales Close Out The Optimism Trifecta

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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Holiday Sales Results Are Uninspiring, Unless You Remember 2008

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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Bland Holiday Sales Results So Far Are Actually Good News

On Monday NPD released consumer technology results to our weekly data clients for the third week of the holiday season and so far sales results are tracking at, or a little better than, our pre-holiday expectations. Prior to the holiday we expected sales dollars to fall between 0 and negative 5 percent for the holiday period. For the first two initial periods we reported on, November sales and Black Friday week sales, revenue has been slightly stronger. With November monthly sales rising less than 1 percent from 2008 due to the strength of sales early in the month, and Black Friday sales falling just 1.2 percent, the trend line has been favoring a closer to flat holiday than our worst case negative expectation.

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