Image Credit: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Discover Financial Services has over the last few years conducted consumer holiday shopping surveys to gauge interest in what is being purchased and spending habits. This year has proven to show some interesting results from what I read in their report. Some 38% of respondents said they would be spending less this year which is a 5% drop from last years 43%.
“Consumers are beginning to feel more confident, and hopefully, that should bring some holiday cheer to retailers,” said Dana Traci, vice president of rewards and product management from Discover. “We’re seeing stronger confidence in shopping, but consumers are still looking for great deals and continue to be mindful of their budgets.”
The trend continues where shoppers determine what brands they are shopping for this year as well, in 2009 57% of those surveyed said they would be shopping for cheaper brands as opposed to this years 31%. Thats a pretty significant drop but what that doesn’t tell you is that quite possibly there will be less money available to retailers and OEM’s, for instance if a consumer spent $2000 on gifts in 2009 and primarily shopped inexpensive brands they would have gotten more compared to spending $2000 in 2010 on the high end or more expensive brands meaning less total items being purchased even though the same amount of money is involved! Is this a good trend? I’m not going to speculate on that, just that its happening and could actually mean fewer purchases in the larger scheme of things. What really surprises me is the comparison of 2009 vs 2010 6% of those surveyed said they planned to re-gift items this year down from a whopping 17% last year! There was also a 12% drop in those that planned to wait until the last minute for deals down to 23% from 35%.
Now where actual purchase intentions and what consumers want shows some very interesting data in my opinion, When purchasers were considering smartphones 44% advised they were looking to purchase an iPhone, 42% an Android powered smartphone and third at 34% was Blackberry. Consumer Electronics topped peoples wish lists at 44% while only 32% of those surveyed said they would be purchasing them as gifts, what was tops for purchasers? You guessed it Apparel, I guess Aunt Louise is getting everyone scarves and socks again this year! Take a more in depth look at the data after the break. Read more…
MetroPCS has added an Android Handset to their line-up just in time for the holiday shopping season. LG and MetroPCS have teamed up to offer consumers the LG Optimus M on MetroPCS’s network. The LG Optimus M features a 3.2-inch screen, Android 2.2 3.2 mega-pixel camera and more. It comes with Swype pre-installed and offers a great package. MetroPCS is offering this device with no contract for $229, with an unlimited talk,text and web package that is just $50/month. Read more…
First off Nvidia Tegra 2… This is a killer chipset in a tablet… in a phone its a no brainer besides the possible battery life issues that we are already all too familiar with. There has been a tipster floating around pictures today of what is said to be the Motorola Olympus sporting an Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset and possibly being touted by Motorola internally as its “iPhone Killer” according to sources. Apparently according to information posted at UPnP forums the Olympus should have the standard wireless fair including WiFi in the B/G/N bands, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR. Little else is known at this point however and with no official information all we can do is speculate at this point.
Conflipper, an Ex-WinMo hacker told WP Central that Windows Phone 7 ships with a “Genuine Software” checker much like Microsoft Office and Windows 7. Apparently the keys are built into the hardware and Windows Phone 7 uses those keys to compare against. The problem doesn’t seem to come from being able to load a Custom ROM but in the fact that XBox Live, The Marketplace and other areas check that the hardware key matches the OS version on the device. Read more…
