Consumer electronics industry projects busy holiday season
BY DON SHERON
San Antonio Express-News
Posted at 5:44 p.m. PDT Monday, Oct. 15, 2001
The consumer electronics industry is looking for consumers.
If projections hold up, this holiday season may be good for the consumer electronics market, despite the nation's economic woes and fears of terrorism.
``Consumers' concerns over the economy and safety are leading them to recognize that consumer electronics products allow families to stay connected and share time in the home,'' said Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association.
The industry trade organization said Friday that its survey shows that 77 percent of consumers plan to buy at least one consumer electronic device this holiday season.
And the CEA says the hot products this year appear to be portable CD players with headsets, DVD players, digital cameras and wireless phones.
``We've seen an increase of consumers going to portable CD headset devices and portable boom boxes,'' said CEA spokesman Tim McNamara.
CD players are making a comeback after concerns over copyright infringement hit the market for MP3 players.
MP3 is a technology that allows computer users to download songs from the Internet and share them with other computer users.
Some songs were free to be distributed, but other copyrighted material created a storm of controversy by the music recording industry.
``Last year, we saw the MP3 devices really skyrocket, because that was the peak of media attention and popularity,'' McNamara said.
But since then, things have cooled off.[We'll see about that]
``People are a little concerned about making sure that they're doing things proper'' to avoid misusing copyrighted material, McNamara said.
Overall projections for this year's sales of consumer electronics appear to be a little ahead of last year's expectations which, by the way, fell short of reality, McNamara said.
``People were projecting big things last year'' because of a booming economy, he said. ``Last holiday season was still pretty good, but it wasn't as successful as we thought it might be.''
Projections are one thing, but actual consumer spending is another. Retailers traditionally bank on the holiday shopping season for their year's profits.
The CEA survey found that consumers plan to spend about the same this year on gifts as they did last year. That's despite 70 percent of consumers expressing concerns that the U.S. economy is worse now than at the same time last year.
It may be too early to say how much retailers are expecting for the electronics market. Minnesota-based Best Buy Co. Inc. and Virginia-based Circuit City Stores Inc. could not be reached for comment.
The CEA survey showed that almost three-fourths of consumers plan to buy through a traditional retailer, while a third plan to shop online.
