Will Netbooks give electronics retailers the blow they stress this holiday shopping season? (Credit:.

The about two-month shopping time before university starts is typically profitable for consumer electronics retailers. Not this year. All categories combined showed nominal growth. Although notebook sales increased 10 percent over the same years the year before, desktops were down 3 percent.

And products that have been guaranteed big sellers in ago years endure to give the slip momentum: digital-camera sales were down 1 percent, printer sales were even, and MP3 contestant sales were up 7 percent. Will Netbooks give electronics retailers the whack they privation this celebration shopping season? (Credit: Hewlett-Packard) This is especially on the subject of to electronics retailers, since the all-important sabbatical shopping ripen is approaching, a age when they typically can look forward to deportment catch-up in perennial sales and revenue. "The vacation (period) is meet to glance a lot like back-to-school, I think," said Steve Baker, defect president of application analysis for NPD Group, which tracks electronics retailing. There's inclined to to be "a mean scintilla better demand" because there are a broader array of categories that settle shop for during the holiday.

For back-to-school, retailers impel mostly computers and peripherals. The predicament with notebooks: they've been selling so well for so crave that the head just can't sustain that affectionate of growth forever. Growth percentages in years days of old for laptops during the back-to-school shopping era have been in the high teens and depressed 20s, which is why 10 percent evolution this year is disappointing for retailers.

And when a merchandise matures, souse price declines are. Notebooks from marque names have been routinely on tap for less than $600 for a while, and retailers are find it harder to cut prices and claim acceptable profit margins. The same could be authentic for Black Friday and beyond, when retailers customarily unveil their best deals of the year. Of course, back-to-school shopping isn't a unmitigated gauge for gala shopping, especially when it comes to an influential category like notebooks.

Portable PCs will become even harder to foreshadow this year because of the soi-disant wild card that present. Every principal PC maker has one now, but they haven't been present in prominently volumes. This will change in the next few weeks, and it will be fascinating to see if mainstream consumers chance a use for them. New fallout categories, combined with disturbing pecuniary news, makes it harder for electronics retailers to intuit comfortable heading into the fete season.

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