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Bargains Are Near; Just Keep Waiting
Published in the New York Times on August 26, 2006
As the economy slows, manufacturers and consumer electronics retailers are growing more anxious - and pushy. Continue your buying binge, they tell consumers. Now is the best time to buy digital cameras, notebook computers and big-screen televisions, they say. Annoy them. Wait even longer to buy any electronics. The cardinal rule of the industry is that prices always go down. There is no reason, despite increasing inflation pressures elsewhere in the economy, for that to change this year. Remember that you rarely need new electronic devices. When you do - or you think you've waited long enough - you can turn the makers' and merchants' competitive natures to your advantage. The market for digital cameras, flat-panel TV's and external hard drives for backing up data, an emerging category, are especially tumultuous right now. Manufacturers are adding myriad features and making pricing more opaque, but there is a method to cut through the confusion to spot the bargains. If you were shopping at the grocery store and wanted to figure out what the better deal was, the 2-liter bottle of Coke for $1.39 or the six-pack of Pepsi for $3.89, it is a fairly simple equation. For one thing, the unit price is often right there on the store shelf. But even when it is not, you just take the price and divide it by the number of liters or, for the traditionalists, ounces. (The liter bottle is the better deal at 2 cents an ounce.) What you are really looking for, though, is the deal. You want to find the two-liter bottle of Coke selling for less, per milliliter or ounce, than the one-liter bottle. Could you do the same thing with consumer electronics to find the sweet spot before you buy? You could if the devices had essentially the same features; in other words, if they were a commodity product, like a DVD player or a wireless router. Many, though, are not. But if you can strip a product down to its essence, to that one thing that is most important, you might be able to find the bigger or newer product selling for less than the smaller or older. Here are ways to look for the better deal in the competitive markets for cameras, televisions and hard drives: CAMERAS The shift from film to digital is almost complete. Because of that, demand for digital cameras is expected to slow. Prices have fallen about 9 percent this year, but in certain categories where competition is intense, like the slim cameras, the price decline has been greater. Sales of cameras that are less than an inch thick have increased 131 percent over the last year, according to a survey of retailers by NPD, a consumer products consulting service. The average price for those cameras has fallen 14.7 percent, to $290 from $340. The prices of digital single-lens-reflex cameras, preferred by professionals and experienced hobbyists, have dropped significantly. About 22 percent of sales in this category were for cameras that cost less than $700. That is remarkable because a year ago, there was not a single camera selling for less than $700. In the main market of compact cameras, manufacturers were saying last year that consumers were no longer making their purchases based on the picture resolution, measured in megapixels. They were said to be looking at other features like styling, image stabilization or the various automated shooting modes. It turns out, megapixels still matter. "I don't think the resolution war is finished yet," said Liz Cutting, an imaging analyst with NPD. The average price for a 5-megapixel compact camera, which about a third of consumers are buying, has fallen 34.4 percent, to $212 this year. That comes to about $42 a megapixel. The average price of an 8-megapixel compact camera has fallen even more, about 47 percent, to $394. That's about $49 a megapixel. With only a 17 percent increase in price for a camera with 60 percent more pixels, manufacturers are encouraging consumers to trade up. So watch for the anomalies when the 8-megapixel cameras drop below $336, or $42 a megapixel. CompUSA, for instance, was recently offering the 10-megapixel Exilim Z1000 for $400, or $40 a megapixel. |
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Bargains Are Near; Just Keep Waiting
On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 15:14:59 GMT, jeremy wrote:
It turns out, megapixels still matter. "I don't think the resolution war is finished yet," said Liz Cutting, an imaging analyst with NPD. The average price for a 5-megapixel compact camera, which about a third of consumers are buying, has fallen 34.4 percent, to $212 this year. That comes to about $42 a megapixel. The average price of an 8-megapixel compact camera has fallen even more, about 47 percent, to $394. That's about $49 a megapixel. With only a 17 percent increase in price for a camera with 60 percent more pixels, manufacturers are encouraging consumers to trade up. So watch for the anomalies when the 8-megapixel cameras drop below $336, or $42 a megapixel. CompUSA, for instance, was recently offering the 10-megapixel Exilim Z1000 for $400, or $40 a megapixel. That's got to be one of the most inane ways possilble of measuring value for cameras. Is a ten megapixel camera, all other things being equal, twice as "good" as a five megapixel model? For most poeple, probably not. -dms |
#3
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Bargains Are Near; Just Keep Waiting
jeremy wrote:
Published in the New York Times on August 26, 2006 As the economy slows, manufacturers and consumer electronics retailers are growing more anxious - and pushy. I agree totally. The signs are very strong: My SO, who is an avid watcher of retaillers (as she sells to them), has noticed store inventories are tightening. IOW retaillers are putting less capital on the shelf in anticipation of tightening disposable income. This also, of course, reduces "discount" risk on remaining inventory. In light of record and growing consumer and government debt in the US; falling car sales, falling house prices, rising house inventory in most of the US and rising energy prices, it is clear that a new recession has started, if not "officially" yet. (The embattled Republicans are in for more bad news as several economics reports will be published late next week, a few months before the mid term elections...) So, if you're debt free and perhaps you have a little put away, you'll do well over the next few years and be well placed to snap up some bargains as they appear. Land, houses, cars (esp. SUV's and RV's), motorcycles, camera gear, etc. will all soon be on the market at steal-it prices. We currently wait about 6 months for new DSLR prices to "settle"; but in the next year it will likely take only a couple/three months Cheers, Alan -- -- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm -- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm -- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin -- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch. |
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Bargains Are Near; Just Keep Waiting
That's what I say Jeremy, never 'feed the giants' simply for their hype to the consumer merely based upon their massive "lust for money"...find a cheaper way. HOLD ON to your M42 system as long as 35mm film exists!!! I know I would. -- })))* Giant_Alex cravdraa_at-yahoo_dot-com not my site: http://www.e-sword.net/ |
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Bargains Are Near; Just Keep Waiting
On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 12:51:24 -0400, Michael wrote:
That's got to be one of the most inane ways possilble of measuring value for cameras. Sort of like - "In conclusion, the Toyota's the more comfortable car, with good handling and an excellent reputation for reliability. But the Mazda runs $81 per horsepower, while the Toyota is more than $86 per horsepower. So, obviously, the Mazda is the better value in a mid-size sedan for the typical new car buyer." Nah. More like the bad old days when ads pushed "muscle" cars with their 7 liter engines, huge carb's with air scoops in the hood, and they got you from point to point in, oh, about the same amount of time. And they produced more noise, pollution and (naturally) cost more. But it's not really an inane way of measuring value for cameras. Why, you may ask? Because it's not really measuring the camera's value for consumers. It's measuring the value of the cameras for the manufacturers. The manufacturing cost of 8 and 10mp cameras isn't much higher than that of 5mp cameras, but they can sell for much higher prices. If the sale of 8 and 10mp cameras results in large profit increases, it makes those cameras much more valuable to the manufacturers than the 5mp cameras. Whoever wrote that article for the NY Times wrote it more as a business analyst than as a technology analyst. I wonder which section of the paper the article appeared in. |
#6
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Bargains Are Near; Just Keep Waiting
On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 13:14:13 -0400, ASAAR wrote:
On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 12:51:24 -0400, Michael wrote: That's got to be one of the most inane ways possilble of measuring value for cameras. Sort of like - "In conclusion, the Toyota's the more comfortable car, with good handling and an excellent reputation for reliability. But the Mazda runs $81 per horsepower, while the Toyota is more than $86 per horsepower. So, obviously, the Mazda is the better value in a mid-size sedan for the typical new car buyer." Nah. More like the bad old days when ads pushed "muscle" cars with their 7 liter engines, huge carb's with air scoops in the hood, and they got you from point to point in, oh, about the same amount of time. And they produced more noise, pollution and (naturally) cost more. But it's not really an inane way of measuring value for cameras. Why, you may ask? Because it's not really measuring the camera's value for consumers. It's measuring the value of the cameras for the manufacturers. The manufacturing cost of 8 and 10mp cameras isn't much higher than that of 5mp cameras, but they can sell for much higher prices. If the sale of 8 and 10mp cameras results in large profit increases, it makes those cameras much more valuable to the manufacturers than the 5mp cameras. Whoever wrote that article for the NY Times wrote it more as a business analyst than as a technology analyst. I wonder which section of the paper the article appeared in. It was in the business section. Besides cameras, the article looked at price trends on flat-screen TVs and external hard drives. -dms |
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Bargains Are Near; Just Keep Waiting
jeremy wrote:
Published in the New York Times on August 26, 2006 It turns out, megapixels still matter. "I don't think the resolution war is finished yet," said Liz Cutting, an imaging analyst with NPD. The average price for a 5-megapixel compact camera, which about a third of consumers are buying, has fallen 34.4 percent, to $212 this year. That comes to about $42 a megapixel. The average price of an 8-megapixel compact camera has fallen even more, about 47 percent, to $394. That's about $49 a megapixel. With only a 17 percent increase in price for a camera with 60 percent more pixels, manufacturers are encouraging consumers to trade up. So watch for the anomalies when the 8-megapixel cameras drop below $336, or $42 a megapixel. CompUSA, for instance, was recently offering the 10-megapixel Exilim Z1000 for $400, or $40 a megapixel. Assessing the value of a camera in terms of dollars per megapixel has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. -- Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark² at: www.pbase.com/markuson |
#8
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Bargains Are Near; Just Keep Waiting
On Sat, 26 Aug 2006 12:02:14 -0700, "Mark²" mjmorgan(lowest even
number wrote: So watch for the anomalies when the 8-megapixel cameras drop below $336, or $42 a megapixel. CompUSA, for instance, was recently offering the 10-megapixel Exilim Z1000 for $400, or $40 a megapixel. Assessing the value of a camera in terms of dollars per megapixel has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. From your perspective that's certainly true. But the article wasn't written for you. For its intended audience it wasn't dumb at all, although it was far from an example of brilliant analysis. And where would you advise investors to plunk down their easily earned cash? If it's a company other than Canon they'll need a large shipment of lithium batteries down in Hades. |
#9
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Bargains Are Near; Just Keep Waiting
"jeremy" wrote in message news:TzZHg.1462$nR2.117@trnddc03... Published in the New York Times on August 26, 2006 CAMERAS The shift from film to digital is almost complete. Because of that, demand for digital cameras is expected to slow. Prices have fallen about 9 percent this year, but in certain categories where competition is intense, like the slim cameras, the price decline has been greater. Sales of cameras that are less than an inch thick have increased 131 percent over the last year, according to a survey of retailers by NPD, a consumer products consulting service. The average price for those cameras has fallen 14.7 percent, to $290 from $340. The prices of digital single-lens-reflex cameras, preferred by professionals and experienced hobbyists, have dropped significantly. About 22 percent of sales in this category were for cameras that cost less than $700. That is remarkable because a year ago, there was not a single camera selling for less than $700. In the main market of compact cameras, manufacturers were saying last year that consumers were no longer making their purchases based on the picture resolution, measured in megapixels. They were said to be looking at other features like styling, image stabilization or the various automated shooting modes. It turns out, megapixels still matter. "I don't think the resolution war is finished yet," said Liz Cutting, an imaging analyst with NPD. The average price for a 5-megapixel compact camera, which about a third of consumers are buying, has fallen 34.4 percent, to $212 this year. That comes to about $42 a megapixel. The average price of an 8-megapixel compact camera has fallen even more, about 47 percent, to $394. That's about $49 a megapixel. With only a 17 percent increase in price for a camera with 60 percent more pixels, manufacturers are encouraging consumers to trade up. So watch for the anomalies when the 8-megapixel cameras drop below $336, or $42 a megapixel. CompUSA, for instance, was recently offering the 10-megapixel Exilim Z1000 for $400, or $40 a megapixel. After doing my research; I was disappointed to find all the shops fresh out of Exilims. Z1000s were out of the question. Bob Hickey |
#10
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Bargains Are Near; Just Keep Waiting
Bob Hickey wrote:
After doing my research; I was disappointed to find all the shops fresh out of Exilims. Z1000s were out of the question. Bob Hickey $255. http://www.thedigitalexpo.com/produc...aexz1000&tab=1 |
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