11/05, 6:45pm
NPD says Win 7 units soar, cash modest
The NPD Group today revealed that initial Windows 7 sales were more than twice as strong as for Vista. Although declining to provide the number of copies estimated sold, the researchers note that boxed, retail unit sales of the new OS were 234 percent higher in the first few days than the 2007 release. The jump is credited to both to steep pre-order discounts, strong marketing and similar approaches that helped ship a large number of initial copies.
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10/06, 10:05am
NPD positive on back-to-school PC sales
Back-to-school notebook sales were as strong as ever this year but skewed in favor of cheaper systems, the NPD Group said today in a new study. About $1.6 billion of the $7.6 billion spent between late July and mid-September went directly to notebooks, or about as much as was spent last year despite ongoing economic problems and rendering them "recession-proof." However, the revenue came at the expense of system prices: while more systems were sold, the average price of a school notebook fell from $804 last year to $624 this year.
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10/05, 12:15pm
NPD shows Mac use in US on the rise
Over 12 percent of all US homes have at least one Mac but aren't exclusive to the platform, the NPD Group found in its latest Household Penetration study. The number is a large jump from nine percent just last year, but about 85 percent of these also have at least one Windows PC as well. These homes are also more likely to have three or more computers, at 66 percent, versus just 29 percent for Windows-only homes.
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08/20, 2:40pm
NPD Smartphone Split
Smartphones now represent more than a quarter of all cellphones sold in the US, the NPD Group has revealed in findings on Wednesday. Shipments of the devices jumped by almost half, or 47 percent, year over year in to where they represented 28 percent of all phones in the country this spring. The shift helped push the average price of a phone up $4 to $87.
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08/18, 10:40am
iTunes now 25p of US Music
Exactly one quarter of all music sold in the US now comes from iTunes, the NPD Group said today. Its portion of the market for the first half of 2009 is up from 21 percent in 2008 and represents 69 percent of the digital-only market. By comparison, Walmart now has just 14 percent of all music while Best Buy claims third place with an unspecified amount. In digital, Amazon MP3 is a distant second with just 8 percent of the market.
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07/13, 2:10pm
NPD Says 25pc Netbooks
Netbooks are growing in popularity so quickly that they could represent a quarter of all portables sold this year, the NPD Group's DisplaySearch predicted today. Although netbook shipments should almost exactly double their 2008 levels to about 32.7 million in 2009, the researchers sees the total notebook market actually dropping by 100,000 systems to 129.5 million. The inertia would leave netbooks consuming 25.3 percent of the entire portable business this year.
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06/23, 12:30pm
Netbook Buyers Unhappy
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.
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05/12, 4:20pm
Most money goes to BD, DVD
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).
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05/04, 10:05am
NPD on US Phones Q1 2009
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.
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03/03, 4:55pm
NPD on US Phone Sales
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.
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12/09, 2:55pm
Thanksgiving Sales Drop
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.
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11/19, 11:30am
iPhone 3G tops AdMob
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.
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04/03, 4:30pm
iTunes tops music retail
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.
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02/25, 7:30pm
Survey: 6% iPod decline
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.
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12/24, 8:35am
NPD on Media Player Sales
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 iPod sales.
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