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Businesses The Almighty Buck United States Technology

US Spending On Tech Booms Even As Overall Purchasing Declines (theverge.com) 58

Posted by BeauHD from the cause-and-effect dept.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a surge in sales for consumer technology in the U.S., even as spending declines overall, an NPD analyst is reporting. The Verge reports: For the week ending April 18th, NPD's Stephen Baker notes that consumer tech sales increased by 23 percent year-over-year. In contrast, the group tracked an overall decline in spending of 23 percent across the industries it tracks. NPD's data also suggests that people are buying more tech to keep themselves entertained, not just to work or learn remotely.

TV sales are up by a massive 86 percent and are selling at the highest volume ever outside a holiday, according to Baker. People are also buying accessories like soundbars (up by 69 percent) and streaming players (42 percent). DVD and Blu-ray players were also up by 27 percent, showing that even physical media is getting a boost. That's not surprising given that last week the NPD reported that nearly a third of US households are without broadband access, which could limit their ability to stream video. Sales of monitors increased by 73 percent compared to last year, PCs were up 53 percent, printers were up by 61 percent, and microphones were up by a massive 147 percent. Chromebook sales are also reportedly seeing triple-digit sales increases, which makes sense given how popular they are in classrooms. Underpinning all this tech is a 70 percent increase in the sale of networking equipment.
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US Spending On Tech Booms Even As Overall Purchasing Declines More

US Spending On Tech Booms Even As Overall Purchasing Declines

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  • I'm not exactly sure what how government thought $1200+ was going to be spent, but I'm going to guess that only a minority of recipients actually spent it on food/housing/bills.

    I'm going to guess many more people used it as a windfall "second tax refund" and blew it on digital devices.

    Those who have not been financially impacted by COVID-19 closures probably tossed the money into their Robinhood account or savings.

    • I'm fairly sure a lot of households just used it to make ends meet and the money has long since vanished into holes that needed to be plugged to keep the collection agency at bay for another month. I doubt that much of it actually went into spending it on something new.

    • I'm going to guess many more people used it as a windfall "second tax refund" and blew it on digital devices.

      Yeah, so what? It makes the economy run (or sprint, or whatever - I don't fully understand why people keep talking about the economy like it's a person).

      Besides, if people stopped buying iPads from Apple and Fire tablets from Amazon, you know those two companies would be on the verge of bankruptcy! I mean, you've seen their bank accounts, right? You know those poor guys (or girls - again I don't know

    • The stats I'd heard were that most people immediately spent it on food. We've been trying to decide how best to spend ours on small businesses, but yes so far most of it has been squirreled away... some people I know in less well equipped school districts had to spend it on digital devices to support remote learning.

    • Those who have not been financially impacted by COVID-19 closures probably tossed the money into their Robinhood account or savings.

      This certainly rings true for us. We've been very fortunate thus far (no furloughs or layoffs), but our clients have cut back significantly on their spending, so once the payroll protection check runs out at my day job the story may be different. Thus, exactly like you said, the stimulus check (which just hit our account in the last 24 hours) immediately went into our Emergency Fund line item, buying us the better part of a month's worth of savings in case things go south.

      That said, we would have pumped som

  • The year every kindergartener got a laptop (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dmay34 ( 6770232 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @08:03AM (#60003456)
    I've joked several times that this year will be remembered as the year every single kindergartener got their own laptop. The moment schools started getting closed I told my wife "We got to get our son a laptop or they are all going to be snatched up." I was right, we ordered a cheap $200 Walmart brand laptop, a few days later they were all sold out.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ranton ( 36917 )

      I've joked several times that this year will be remembered as the year every single kindergartener got their own laptop.

      As another example of how this situation affects various economic classes differently, my kindergartner was sent home with the ipad she already had for a portion of her studies. I knew she did some work digitally at school, but didn't realize everyone had their own ipad already. We ended up donating one of our ipads to one of my wife's childhood friends because their school district didn't have this, and they have three foster kids who now need to do e-learning (they are saints).

  • Whenever you read one of those articles analyzing American's total "buying power" today vs X number of years ago, they point out how only certain categories of things have gone way up in price vs. the rate of inflation and "cost of living" increases. Hospitals and medical care are, by far, the top one of those.

    But they also argue that we're better off in terms of other things that take much less buying power to obtain than they ever did before. The prime example of that one is usually the flat screen TV.

    • There's no reason to go outside and risk getting infected by a potentially virus just to rent a movie. iTunes always has dozens of movies to rent for only 99 cents (make sure you check the pull-down menu as it seems to shows different titles), the selections changes a bit every day or so.

  • Economists say that the most important thing to get the economy back on track is consumer spending. Get some money to the poorest Americans and they will spend it immediately and boost the businesses that are the engines of our economy.

    Unfortunately every one of the tech items that we are buying is made in China or other foreign countries. How does this help OUR economy?

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