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Sales figures from NPD Group for the week of Black Friday suggest that consumers snapped up cheap TVs and Android tablets faster than ever, but laptop and point-and-shoot cameras were?falling off shopping lists.
The price of TVs continues to drop,?with the average selling price hitting just $333 this year. Forty percent of TVs bought had 32-inch screens, suggesting buyers took the sales?opportunities?to pick up a second or even third TV. Large TVs, too, were popular, with 60-inch units and above selling 10 times faster than they did two years ago.
Why? Cheap cameras and all those other devices have one thing in common: Their functions are replicated by smartphones and tablets.
Sales in several other categories weren't so robust. MP3 players, point-and-shoot cameras, camcorders, and GPS devices were all unpopular.
Point-and-shoots were practically being given away, averaging just over $100 in price ? but few customers were buying. Even laptops, which were?cheaper than ever, sold fewer than last year.
Why? Cheap cameras and all those other devices have one thing in common: Their functions are replicated by smartphones and tablets.
No surprise, then, that sales of Android tablets jumped 177 percent over last year's Black Friday. The success is no doubt in part due to the availability?of devices like the Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7, starting at $199, compared to the iPad's starting price of $499 and the iPad Mini at $329.?(If you're wondering about iPads and smartphones, they weren't included in NPD's study.)
Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis, agreed that shoppers were opting for a more integrated approach in their tech.
"It has to do with the cloud, smartphones and tablets. Some of those categories (such as?GPS and?MP3 players) are down 50 to 75 percent from where they were three, four years ago," he told NBC News.
But despite sales nearly tripling in volume, the money generated by tablets?only increased by 91 percent. That's because the average selling price of tablets dropped from $219 last year to $151 this year. That average was brought down not by rock-bottom, sale-priced Nooks and Nexuses, but by off-brand tablets that could cost under $100.
"These weren't first-tier manufacturers," Baker points out. A $79 tablet isn't such a bad idea for some shoppers anymore ? no matter what, they are?much better than they were last year or the year?before.
Items?that tend to go along with tablets and smartphones also saw a boost in sales. Audio accessories like headphones and wireless speakers saw significant increases as consumers?looked to make their new streaming devices sound decent.
Interchangeable-lens cameras too, be they DSLRs or mirrorless, got a healthy bump (despite the Black Friday deals being mostly junk). An iPhone camera may be a good replacement for a $150 point-and-shoot, but not for a high-quality kit.
Whenever general-purpose devices like phones get better at something new, as we've seen with photography over the last couple years, sales of?competing single-purpose devices go into?a nosedive. Expect this trend to continue as long as there are still ways for smartphones to get smarter.
Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC?News Digital. His personal website is?coldewey.cc.
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