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$113.5 billion worth of electronics sold in 2004
ravy writes "Americans bought $113.5 billion worth of electronics in 2004 and by 2005 the number will reach $127.5 billion. Digital television sets, MP3 players and flash memory cards were the best-sellers percentagewise, while PCs and cell phones enjoyed more steady growth in terms of sales. Google Zeitgeist also lists ipod, digital camera and mp3 as the most popular consumer electronics queries for the year past."
The calculator on my desk was purchased in 1972. The PC I'm writing this on was bought in 1999. Both are expected to last me for many more years to come. My fear is that the $113.5b figure in the article is mostly the result of people burning money for no reason.
I first looked at the headline without my glasses and read:
$113.5 billion worth of elections sold in 2004
I thought to myself, "Well, that explains that!"
Maybe to people higher up the distribution chain, including the manufacturer? Those chips may have cost $0.02 to produce but you conveniently forget that the first chip cost several orders of magnitude more than that to make. You didn't think that fabrication plants grew on trees, did you?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
This talks about sales in the US. How much did other countries spend?
Agile Artisans
Maybe it went back into R&D to make it cheaper down the line?
Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try.
And here is yahoo's list http://tools.search.yahoo.com/top2004/
The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
It's no suprise, with the cost a an HDTV you don't need to buy to many of them to put them at the top of the list. Their's nothing unusual about HDTV, just an increase in resolution and an excuse to get a step change in consumer cost that will never come down.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
If you don't like, buy cheaper stuff. PC stuff is pretty damn cheap compared to what it used to be 15 years ago.
How much did they throw into landfills?
See, the problem with that, is that do you really want to work in factories, and also, they provide damn cheap labour, 14 cents a week in some cases. Now, still want to stop China production lines?? Some people want to stop it, but most just want to buy their stuff for cheaper. And here is a big plus for you, you can waste your insignificant life on something else then building stuff.
Keeping the prices up helps keep the status up. It would be harder for them to create an iPod craze if the iPods were only $10 and everyone could afford one.
----- Vegans don't send SPAM.
How much longer until we have nationwide wireless internet access?
I am not talking about "Wow, my cell phone can view lynx web pages" but rather portable computing with a dedicated hookup to the net 24 hours a day everywhere you go. And no, pointing to hobbling along with a GPRS enabled palm and a cell phone plan is not what I am asking.
Perhaps we as humans NEED to disconnect from the net completely every so often. I sure as heck dont want to though. I go to the gym, go to work, forced to go shopping with wifey, have to see family etc. I want a pair of glasses hooked up to some unit about the size of a cigarette box that will allow me to get a netfeed, highspeed, anywhere. Or, barring that, cybernetic implants in the ol' eye to display them woulnd't be that bad (barring popups, or attacks by hackers).
Yeah, I am an anime junkie but I want the world promised to us by Lain. Its just - I have gotten so used to having any information available at a whim, that to be disconnected whenever I leave the confines of a computer room is kinda.. sad. And that is kinda sad I know, but its the way I am - I cant be the only one.
How much longer do I have to wait? Anyone? Bueler?
There are some interesting changes that have taken place this year alone and should effect next year's o so bloated number
Flat panel monitors are now affordable. Just last week I noticed a 17 inch had fallen into the 200$ mark. This was pretty much the selling point for me and I suspect many others.
The FCC has released a huge list of mandates for DTV conversion. So unless nothing changes we should see more full power DTV stations by July and then the last mile is July 2006. With that there is a slew of tuners to purchase, infrastructure upgrades and some even more expensive equipment to purchase by the broadcasters themselves. (Alone I've had various quotes for around 20k just for DTV guide data insertion).
So the television industry itself should provide a significant over all increase on the consumer and provider level.
I would be interested to know what other industries have seen some fairly signficant change and what cost expenditures are expected.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
The problem is so will the US. While I don't agree with China's policies, I have to hand it to them, they are smart. They are akin to a drug dealer in a lot of ways, give the products real cheap, then get the US hooked on them so they will keep on coming back for more. They know how to play on the greed of the US and they are integrating themselves into the economy almost to the point where we would be in a shock if we were to try to get rid of them.
This is a country that as little as 6 years ago said war with the US is inevitable. They are spending vasts sums of money to modernize their military, and may very well get the EU to destroy the ban on selling them weapons.
Bush's election is the best thing that ever could have happened to the Chinese. They can talk all they want about trade reform and IP laws, but because they realize that if they stop buying US bonds, the US economy is fucked, and use that to their every advantage. I know Dick Cheney likes to pretend that deficits don't matter, but maybe I'm just old fashioned when I think that letting the largest communist country on earth make us their bitch ISN'T such a bright idea......
Maybe the US should take a step back and think about the costs and benefits of our trade realationship with China.
Monstar L
The article doesn't say if this is worldwide or the US, but given that it's about $378 per person if it's the US, I could see that being the case.
I'd be interested in seeing comparitive numbers with Japan, who are some serious gadget lovers.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
A decrease in production costs in a product rarely results in the decrease in retail price. Or if anything, a $10 decrease in production cost will result in maybe a $1 retail price cost. The retail price will always be finagled to what the public will pay for a product, relatively independent of the production cost of the item. Cutting costs will mainly result in a higher profit margin for the company.
150,000 electrical engineers earning a median of $71k / year for a total of around $10 billion.
130,000 "electronics engineers, except computer" earning a median of $73k / year for another $9.5 billion or so.
70,000 computer hardware engineers earning a median of $79k / year for a total of $5.5 billion.
Yes, that's medians and not averages, but the BLS doesn't give averages, and it's probably within a few percent of the same thing. That's $25 billion of the $127.5 billion in wholesaler purchase price going back to the engineers in those three fields.
The US GDP is about $10T:y; with increasing indebtedness and unbalanced trade, Americans probably spent over $11T in 2004. So even that big industry is only 1% of the American economy. Hell, even some single companies, like IBM, Microsoft, GM and Exxon rake in close to $115B every year, though some of that is "electronics", and maybe half is foreign sales. That number is actually surprisingly low: only about $375:American, while the average salary is about $35K; again, less than 1%, especially considering debt. The real story is perhaps how much can be bought for little money. We seem to be much more than 1% surrounded by all this electronic swag.
--
make install -not war
Something does not compute.
You guys don't get it.
If one is manufacturing wicker baskets, T-shirts, or tennis shoes, by hand, then the cost of labor is a significant percentage of total cost.
Make that wicker basket by machine, and labor costs go way down. Productivity goes up.
Near-slave labor does not provide the cheap goods that are sold to us. Real and true slave labor would not provide enough cost savings either.
The labor costs are not a signigficant part of a Dell Laptop.
The real cost is paid by the tax-payers of the country of manufacture.
The Chinese, Korean, Tiwanese, Japanese, etc, peasant is paying for your fun stuff, with their taxes.
The example of DRAM is a good one. A recent headline reported that a major manufacturer of DRAM in Japan was going to pay a $100megabuck fine for "dumping". Selling in the US at below the cost of manufacture.
That Dell Laptop that costs a so unbelievably small amount of money to you, actually cost more to manufacture than it was sold for. Same with cell-phones and all the electronic fluff.
When you look at the DMCA as a tool by which the "media sector" is trying to micro-regulate the "tech sector" for the sake of controlling revenue streams - this statistic alone basically shows why the DMCA is doomed along with all the industries that rely on it. I say a clash of the titans is comming of the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time.