Holiday Buying Poll Pictures Brisk Sales Of Digital Cameras

Digital cameras and video game consoles look like they'll be the hot gift items for consumers playing Santa this holiday season, says a new poll.


Despite the hype over portable hard-drive music players, good old-fashioned CD players also are highly ranked by holiday shoppers.


But there's not much interest from the mass market in high-definition televisions and TiVo (news - web sites) personal video recorders -- products that have gotten lots of media attention.


TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence polled 1,017 U.S. adults in a nationwide random phone survey Sept. 13-18. The research firm asked people whether they planned to buy any of 15 consumer electronics items this holiday season.


Of those polled, 82% say they plan to buy at least one of the items this Christmas. One in four say they plan to buy digital cameras, easily ranking that item No 1.


That's what the Consumer Electronics Association also sees.


"Digital cameras are selling like gangbusters," said CEA analyst Sean Wargo.


CD players rank as second most popular. Coming in third are video game consoles, such as Sony's (NYSE:SNE - News) PlayStation 2 (news - web sites), Microsoft's (NasdaqNM:MSFT - News) Xbox (news - web sites) and Nintendo (news - web sites)'sNTDOY.PK GameCube. Unit sales of game machines will benefit from price cuts this year, analysts say.


The lowest ranked items in the poll are TiVo (NasdaqNM:TIVO - News) devices and high-definition TVs.


Best Buy (NYSE:BBY - News) is poised to attract the lion's share of tech product shoppers this holiday. It is the retailer of choice among 22.1% of likely electronics buyers this Christmas, the polls shows.


Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE:WMT - News) is second, at 14%. Circuit City Stores (NYSE:CC - News) is third with 10.2%.


Women boosted Wal-Mart's showing. Among likely electronics shoppers who chose Wal-Mart, 63% are women.


The Bentonville, Ark.-based discount retailer has expanded its presence in consumer electronics, putting pressure on specialty chains Best Buy and Circuit City.


Online shopping is the fourth most popular pick among likely electronics buyers. It drew just 3.7% of the votes, but beat out RadioShack (NYSE:RSH - News), Costco (NasdaqNM:COST - News), Target (NYSE:TGT - News) and others. Half of likely buyers in the poll don't list a preferred retailer.


"We expect electronics outlets such as Best Buy and Circuit City and megaretailer Wal-Mart to have a very good Christmas this year," said Constantine Kambanis, an analyst at TechnoMetrica.


Together, those three account for nearly half (46%) of all planned consumer electronics shopping this Christmas.


The Consumer Electronics Association expects U.S. factory-to-dealer sales will be up 5% this holiday season. It forecasts that full-year sales will rise 8% to $108 billion.





The most profitable items for consumer electronics dealers likely will be high-end TVs, Wargo says, such as flat-panel plasma and LCD sets.

Accessories also should be lucrative, he says. They include cables and stands for TVs, memory cards for digital cameras and peripherals for video game machines.

In the poll, men account for 58.9% of those likely to buy video game consoles, 66.2% of DVD recorder buyers and 57.1% of digital camera buyers this holiday.

Women rank higher than men in one category: CD players.