"At the top of the wish list, we're seeing MP3 players, DVD, digital cameras, laptops and of course, TVs...along with cell phones, video games, camcorders. There are so many products out there, it's hard to say one, two or three." Is there a hot new category that's kind of a must have kind of item? "In terms of biggest total volume of sales, it's definitely TV. It's not the hot new. There's a new law which says that analog TV broadcasting will end in early 2009 and consumers are becoming aware of it. And they want to get these big, gorgeous new HD TV sets. And the prices have gotten very reasonable for them."
Just take a look around your nearest warehouse club or electronics retailer. The association says many consumers will be upgrading older digital cameras this holiday season. One category, where they may be taking a wait and see approach....is in high definition DVD players. Two competing standards, Blu-ray and HD DVD, are not exactly the best thing for promoting sales...
"Our research shows that they have delayed some of their high definition DVD purchases because of the confusion of the standards battle."
We should note that not all forecasters are predicting such robust holiday consumer electronics sales. Shapiro believes they'll be proven wrong. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.