Who said there is a recession? And thank god for handouts say consumer electronics retailers who in the first quarter witnessed booming sales of air conditioners, notebooks and TV’s according to the latest GFK Australia data. Demand for flat panel TVs, grew by 6.6% while overall TV sales accounted for 60% of all CE sales. Driving the market was aggressive pricing say GFK. Other categories that grew were home theatre systems by 19%, set-top boxes by 36% per cent. Portable Music players grew by 13.7% per cent while DVD players, recorders, camcorders and car navigation all declined. Technical goods are up 12.3% year on year claims GFK who research the sales of 80 goods. Small domestic appliances, IT and telecoms grew 20 per cent in the first quarter of 2009. GFK also report that the value of the IT market in Q1 2009 was higher than Q4 2008. Contributing to this was notebook sales which grew by 42%. Netbooks accounted for 9% of the value due to the low purchase price of a Netbook. Sales of external storage drives grew by 56% in the quarter. The digital camera and photo section grew by 14.5%. Domestic appliances grew by 2.2%. Following a hot start to the year air conditioning sales grew by 37.6% and fans by 82.4%.
The research company said that during the first quarter of 2009 demand for consumer electronic goods slowed when compared to the last quarter of 2008.
