Barnes & Noble, Amazon Initiate Big Tablet, E-Reader Pricing Moves
PC sales continue to struggle while tablets, soundbars and headphones are enjoying sales growth, Stephen Baker, NPD analyst, told us Monday as the holiday season enters its fourth week. Despite “some interest” in Windows 8 touchscreen products at the high end of the PC market, “there are very few SKUs out there and they're pretty expensive,” Baker said. “From a unit or dollar perspective, that’s not enough to turn around the PC market,” he said.
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Price-cutting in the mainstream tablet and e-reader markets in the past few days is part of expected holiday retail maneuvering, Baker told us. Amazon chopped $50 off the price of the Kindle Fire HD Monday, making its flagship tablet its Deal of the Day, after Barnes & Noble announced a permanent 20 percent price cut on the Nook Simple Touch e-reader Saturday. The Kindle Fire HD tablet came in at $249 at the deal price, and the new price of the Simple Touch is $79. Amazon’s deal follows one on Cyber Monday, where it lopped $70 off the price of the Kindle Fire, bringing it to $129 for the day. “Everybody’s doing price cuts and special pricing to stimulate demand,” Baker said. In the “struggling” e-reader market, “it’s a lot harder to find E-Ink models this year as more people move to the small color tablet,” Baker said.
On the effect of the iPad Mini on the 7-inch tablet market, Baker said there’s still room for the category to grow so the major players are all winning this season, including the Mini, the Samsung Galaxy, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and the Fires. “I don’t think it’s about taking share from each other at this point,” Baker said. “People are trading away from PCs, or just not buying a PC,” he said.
Baker said there “aren’t a lot of significant growth opportunities” in the market, and so far this holiday season is following the expected course with sales driven by big-screen TVs, headphones, soundbars, Bluetooth speakers, tablets and smartphones. Beyond those categories, Baker said, “there’s not a lot of positive news out there” in consumer electronics, he said.
While Bluetooth streaming speakers are rising as a category, dock systems with built-in 30-pin iPod/iPhone docks are being heavily discounted, we've found in stores and online. Bose took $80 off the price of the SoundDock Portable, on its direct online store and through retailers, including Best Buy, which was displaying it in stores for $219. Best Buy also showed in a special docking section at a New York store sale-priced docks from iHome, Sony, JBL and Philips. An iHome color-changing alarm clock with the 30-pin dock was clipped $10 to $49, a Philips clock radio listed for $59, down from $99, and an iLive 3.1-channel speaker bar was a Deal of the Day Monday at $69, a $30 discount, we found. “If you still have a lot of product out there that depends on docking, those are probably products you want to take an opportunity to get rid of,” Baker said, noting that the dock category is giving way to wireless streaming solutions. “Even in low-cost stuff, we see a lot of Bluetooth out there,” he said.
Target is pushing the 32 GB iPod touch this week, offering a $30 Target gift card with purchase. Target also sweetened the deal on iPad purchases with a $50 gift card on a full slate of “select” models, we found. Target is also hyping smartphones this week with free shipping and low prices including an HTC Incredible 2 for free, a Samsung Galaxy S Blaze for $19 and a Motorola 4G Razr Maxx for $49. An online-only waive of T-Mobile’s $49 activation fee ends on Friday, according to the weekly deal mailer.
Using its cross-category advantage, hhgregg is in the last week of an in-store promotion that rewards buyers of four kitchen appliances with a free 32-inch TV. The deal headlined the hhgregg circular that was emailed Sunday but details were sketchy. Questions to hhgregg for clarification weren’t answered by our deadline. According to the fine print, customers have to purchase the TV and mail in a rebate form and then they'll receive a $200 reimbursement by mail. Appliance brands that are part of the deal include Whirlpool, Electrolux, GE and LG, and Samsung appliances are excluded, according to the circular. Other aggressive deals at hhgregg for the week include a 19-inch Curtis LED-lit LCD TV, shaved by $20 to $99, and a 7-inch Android-based Klu tablet from Curtis cut $30 to $69.