June 23 - 12:30pm EDT   Despite the prominent sales spot for netbooks, many of those buying the mini PCs are not only unsatisfied with the experience but often have unrealistic expectations, an NPD study shows. About 60 percent of those who bought netbooks mistakenly assumed the systems would have the same features and performance as notebooks. Among college-age buyers, 65 percent expected the systems to run faster than they did, and only 27 percent were impressed by the relative speed. [full story]

May 12 - 4:20pm EDT   Researchers NPD Group today said that 88% of the money consumers spend on home entertainment goes towards purchasing and renting movies on DVD and Blu-ray discs. Of the $25 each US consumer spends on average in a given month, 63 percent was found to be spent on DVD purchases, 7 percent on Blu-ray discs, and 18% went towards renting DVD and Blu-ray movies. The remaining 12 percent was split between video on-demand (VOD) services (9 percent) and digital downloads and online streaming (3 percent). [full story]

May 4 - 10:05am EDT   BlackBerries nearly dominated iPhones in US smartphone sales for the start of 2009, the NPD Group said today in a new study. The market researchers note that the top-selling phone line from the quarter ended in March was the BlackBerry Curve 8300 series, which edged out the iPhone 3G at second place. Of the top 5 phones, 3 were BlackBerries and included the touchscreen Storm in third place and the non-flip Pearl in fourth. The lone Android phone in the US, T-Mobile's G1, occupied the fifth spot. [full story]

March 3 - 4:55pm EST   Nearly one quarter of US phones are smartphones and are driven by trends the iPhone put in place, findings from the NPD Group show. About 23 percent of phones fit into the advanced category by the end of 2008, or double the share of a year earlier. Exactly half of these were touchscreen devices, a feat which NPD directly credits to Apple popularizing the format through the iPhone and pushing other carriers and phone makers to follow suit. [full story]

December 9 - 2:55pm EST   Despite the usual attention given to the Black Friday shopping rush, sales of home electronics actually dropped for the first time, the NPD Group says. Where sales during Thanksgiving week have typically grown significantly year over year and topped out at $2.2 billion in 2007, these sales actually dropped about 8.4 percent in 2008 to just over $2 billion for this year. The softened sales numbers are believed to stem both from less aggressive overall discounts as well as the failures of high-profile retailers, such as Circuit City and home theater-oriented outlet Tweeter. [full story]

November 19 - 11:30am EST   Apple's second-wave push for the iPhone has already made it the most popular phone on the web, a study of October data from AdMob indicates. The mobile ad provider notes that total worldwide iPhone share for ad requests nearly doubled from 2.1 percent in September to 4.1 percent the following month, bringing it from fourth place to first. The previous leader, Motorola's RAZR V3, has held on to its second place spot but dropped substantially from 4.1 percent to 3.4 percent of all requests to AdMob. [full story]

April 3 - 4:30pm EDT   Earlier reports of the iTunes Store's success are true; Apple has officially said that NPD discovered the media store's dominance over industry giant Wal-Mart during a study. The report states that Apple's 50 million customers have moved over four billion songs from the world's largest music catalogue of over 6 million songs. The study accounts for individual tracks under the assumption that a typical CD contains 12 music tracks, and based over sales in January and February. [full story]

February 25 - 7:30pm EST   Analysis of the first month of March quarter iPod NPD data points to iPod sales of between 9.5-10.3 million, according to research firm Piper Jaffray, which would signal a 6 percent year-over-year decline. "While it is way too early to make a definitive call on March quarter iPod units, we have analyzed the first month of NPD data (Jan.) for the quarter and found that it suggests iPod units of 9.5m-10.3m," said Piper Jaffray senior analyst Gene Munster. Wall Street consensus on iPod sales for Apple's March quarter currently stand at 10.8 million units, representing a 2 percent year-over-year increase. [full story]

December 24 - 8:35am EST   Sales of most handheld media players have dropped during the holiday season just as sales for nearly every other consumer electronics category is climbing upwards, according to a new report from The NPD Group. Tracking sales between November 18th and December 9th -- typically regarded the first half of the holiday shopping period -- the research firm noted that the portable media market declined on average by 16 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. The lone exception is the iPod line, NPD says. Though growth is not as strong as for past years, the Apple device is believed to be countering the downward trend. The group has not published figures for ... [full story]