"Three out of four Americans are going to buy consumer electronics this holiday sell season and the number one product people are going to buy for someone else is a digital camera. The number one product they want for themselves is a plasma television. There is a little bit of a disconnect, but eventually it connects up because both those products are on everyone's lists." Digital cameras are new in the number one spot? "Absolutely. Last year it was the DVD but now it's not that DVD is any less popular, it's just become so commonplace. And also, the price has gotten so dramatically low, that almost everyone has one. A digital camera is a thing that not everybody has yet and they will be buying them. Same thing with the great type of TVs, whether it's LCD or plasma or DLP."
If that sounds a little like mish mosh to you….the association recognizes that's one of the problems it faces…
"Consumer confusion is something that is certainly top of mind. We don't want to overwhelm consumers cause there's so much out there. We're shifting into a world where they have to learn new words like HDTV and DVD and progressive and interlaced and they have to learn things that they just didn't know. It's like having the automobile when it first came out. You had to learn about tires and gasoline and gasoline mileage even and things that just made no sense. So we're shifting into a world which is confusing."
Consumer Electronics Association head, Gary Shapiro. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.