Hopefully, 3D and IPTV will slow the price slide and build back some margin.
—
Well, if the activity, product introductions and the attitude of attendees at the recently completed 2011 International CES are any indication, this should be a good year.
If the 140,000 attendee estimate is correct — and it should be just based on the Vegas cab lines — it would mean CES attendance would be back to levels last seen before 2008. (CEA’s audited attendance number is available in the spring.) The same rebound effect is true for manufacturer shipments to dealers, with CEA estimating that 2011 sales will be $186 billion in the U.S., which would be higher than the record-setting sales of 2008 of $182 billion.
Of course, this good news flies in the face of financials from publicly held chains and reports from The NPD Group and TWICE all showing sales being off in December.
The big culprit in all this — from Best Buy, to hhgregg to all the discounters — was TV. Demand wasn’t as high as normal and, as senior editor Alan Wolf indicated, the “sweet spot” of the TV business during the holidays was 40-inch to 42-inch sets for a sour $499 price point.
The so-called “magic” price point of $500 may be magic for a product category to become a massmarket favorite, but it isn’t magical to the bottom line. Remember $500 DVD players, VCRs, or, going back even further, $500 “big-screen” tube TVs? Hopefully, 3D and IPTV will slow the price slide and build back some margin.
But even hard-bitten retailers, as well as manufacturers that were in CES spin mode, indicated that maybe December was the last gasp of the downturn.
Major manufacturers were feisty about each of their 2011 product lineups. LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba were all spirited in their presentations, with all of them touting 3D and IPTV products. In fact, Sony’s new president/ COO, Phil Molyneux, said the company’s goal is to be the No. 1 brand in the U.S. CE market by 2013.
Is that a case of Sony showing some renewed vigor? We’ll see.
And Vizio, a market leader in TVs, entered the tablet PC and smartphone markets.
Did I mention tablets? They were all over the show from all different types of manufacturers. Just take a look at our compilation of the ones we saw on p. 4 of this issue.
iPad is still the king of the category, but unlike MP3 this time Apple may have some real competition, and tablets may become a market where more than a few manufacturers could make some money.
The other star of this CES was smartphones featuring more capabilities to communicate, inform and entertain than ever before. Of course, the biggest splash came after CES last Tuesday in New York, when iPhone finally came to Verizon. We will soon see how the competition between the AT&T and Verizon versions play out, but one thing is sure — Apple is the winner.
And I haven’t mentioned yet all of the apps and capabilities of Internet TVs, even though Google TV had a low profile at CES, but more about that in our next post-show print edition on Jan. 24.
Suffice it to say that the 2011 version of CES kicked the year off with a bang. If the economy cooperates just slightly, the industry may just have a better-than-average year.
Original post here http://www.mtbs3d.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12133&Itemid=89