The most surprising trend of the Holiday Sales period was the strength of Laptop Sales.
Of course, everyone expected TVs to do great (we're going through one of those rare analog - digital transformation moments in TVs, when price points have dropped enough for consumers to transition from one technology to another - e.g., cassettes to CDs).
But everyone expected Laptops to suck. Vista was delayed. Everyone already had a laptop. There was no good reason to buy one. People were going to wait it out till 2007.
Well, clearly that didn't happen.
Again, according to the NPD group - laptops sold exceedingly well during the week of Black Friday - coming in at the 2nd most sold electronics category (LCD TVs was #1 of course). In fact, laptop sales for 2006 .vs. 2005 were higher than 2005 .vs. 2004.
It's hard to see 2007 slowing down. Vista is a huge step forward and it's getting strong reviews (and actually for a Microsoft product - it looks really well engineered and put together; think of it as the Windows equivalent of Excel - a product that does work well). There's a good New York Times review of Vista if you're interested (free registration required).
You'll need a pretty good set of hardware to take full advantage of Vista, and that'll drive a big buying cycle for laptops - especially towards the latter part of the year. Most importantly, it may even reverse (or at least stabilize) the free fall in laptops pricing, and inch the average laptop price back to closer to $1,000 (the average laptop price is now approaching $700).
So, if you're selling laptops - we think that you'll find 2007 even better than 2006. Happy Selling.
"Fast,
Friendly"
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