RSSSurvey: Big decline seen in US consumer tech spending
By Ed Oswald | Published March 19, 2008, 4:49 PM
With an American economy that is becoming increasingly unstable, thanks largely to the credit crunch and the return of inflation, consumers appear to be closing their purse strings tightly when it comes to tech purchases.
Only 19% of 4,427 consumers polled late last month say they will spend more on tech gadgets in the next 90 days, versus 33% who will spend less, according to a study released Tuesday by ChangeWave Research of US consumers. While the number of consumers saying they would not spent as much has remained rather constant, those spending more has not.
During November, nearly four out of every ten consumers said they would spend more, but this had dropped to 27% by January. With increasing consumer unease, it appears as if conditions for the CE market are bound to only get worse.
"These results clearly show that the consumer electronics sector is getting whacked," ChangeWave researcher and author of the report Tobin Smith said.
The hardest hit retailers were Best Buy and Circuit City, down six points and three points respectively. However budget retailers seem to be benefiting from a worsening economy, with their market shares remaining stable.
Items that are expected to see the biggest decreases in sales include LCD TVs, digital cameras, cell phones, and iPods.
CE retailers shouldn't expect consumers' tax rebate checks coming this spring to help their situation very much. Only seven percent expected to spend it on consumer electronics, with nearly a third expecting to use it to pay down debt.
"There is frightfully little in our findings to suggest the federal stimulus plan will jumpstart consumer spending on electronics and popular gadgets," Smith explained. "Rather, our findings point to an increasingly preoccupied American consumer who has fallen out of love with gadgets -- at least temporarily."
ChangeWave's data is also backed up by the commonly used Consumer Confidence index, which fell to 75 in February (par being 100), its lowest level in fifteen years -- save for the period surrounding the beginning of the 2003 Iraq War. Expectations are similarly low, and were at seventeen-year lows according to the Conference Board, which produces the report.
Not me, I've been exremely wasteful in the past year with regards to spending money on unnecessary tech items.
It's almost tax return time, people will buy more crap when they get thier checks. I havent seen a return in four years. All of my subcontractor income is untaxed.
Bugger.
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Hmmm, let me see, I can pick five of the six below, which one doesn't belong?
- Pay mortgage/rent
- Pay car loan
- Pay student loan
- Buy food
- Fill-up tank
- Buy a new computer or tech gadget
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I wonder how much worse it will get as the US economy continues to go downhill. I know people who usually have a dinner and movie night every weekend, but have skimmed that down to just once per month to save money!
It should be interesting to see how much more the tech industry will get whacked.
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Think Vista wary consumers have a large role in this? You don't need a new computer to run XP.
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I didn't need a new computer to run Vista. Don't buy a crap computer if you expect it to last long. It's simple.
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I think people tend to buy PCs as they need them - the OS they come with is mostly unimportant. Vista certainly doesn't help sales, but it doesn't harm them either as PCs can still be bought with XP anyway.
Thankfully it looks like MS is on the road to recovery with SP1 in Vista - it's made some vast improvements in performance and compatibility. It's probably still not worth upgrading to unless you have a specific Vista-only requirement (can't think of one, personally - they haven't made a DX10-only game yet) but it's not the nasty b**** of an OS it was at release.
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You can still buy brand new machines that don't run Vista.
It all depends on your definition of 'run'. HP/Compaq seem to think 'run' means Vista + NIS2007 on 256MB... but personally I think a 10 minute boot for a brand-new laptop is ridiculous.
I don't like how Vista runs on my E66 @ 3.2Ghz, let alone anything you could buy off the shelf. It's certainly better today than release, but XP is still faster 90% of the time.
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" think people tend to buy PCs as they need them - the OS they come with is mostly unimportant. Vista certainly doesn't help sales, but it doesn't harm them either as PCs can still be bought with XP anyway."
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I belive most of the average computer users do not do any maintence on there computers. The Result is ... A perfectly good computer is taken to the trash bin and off to Best Buy to get a nice SHINY Computer.
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If you consider "perfectly good" the same as "needing maintenance" then you're right. Truth told, not many users understand how to perform maintenance operations on their PC because it isn't a simple process, unless you have an understanding of what is under the hood.
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