CES 2010 New York Preview

Gary Shapiro, President and CEO or the Consumer Electronics Association

Gary Shapiro and his team presented some interesting info at yesterday’s CES 2010 preview in New York. Here are some choice inclusions:

2010 holiday spending will likely be down 3% compared to 2009. By comparison 2008 holiday spending was down 15% on 2007.

Overall gift spending is likely to be up 4% but consumer electronics (CE) gift spending is likely to rise by 8%. Average CE gift spending per person is likely to be $222 this year compared to $206 in 2008.

Holiday spend on computers is projected to rise by 17.3% projected for Q4 2009 compared to Q4 2008

80% of consumers are hoping for a CE gift this year.

Netbooks have appeared for the first time in the top ten gifts desired by teenagers.

We are more likely to see retailers pushing value-oriented bundles of multiple devices and higher margin feature-rich offerings than a flood of basic cheap devices.

The explosion of affordable devices in the 7-13 inch spectrum is likely to continue. These are likely to be comprised of mainly netbooks or e-book readers. I also expect the new class of Intel’s Ultra Low Voltage CPU powered ultraportables to eat into netbook sales in this class of screen size and weight.

14% of tech enthusiasts and 8% of other consumers own a netbook.

6% of tech enthusiasts and 4% of other consumers have e-readers such as a Kindle or competing devices.

…and there was a funky stat from Gary that more than 1,200 hours of video footage is uploaded to YouTube every hour!

Frank Davis, Ford’s Executive Director of North American Product Development was also on hand to talk about the technology present in the current Taurus, which was announced as the official car of CES 2010.

Monster Cable announced that John Legend will perform at the CES 2010 Retail Awards ceremony.

Happy holiday shopping, keep the economy going y’all