The consumer electronics business thrives on change, providing consumers the newest and the best. This year, that doesn’t mean bigger, it means slimmer and greener, with a trend towards more environmentally friendly products that use less power and are made with fewer toxic chemicals and heavy metals than in the past.
“Manufacturers are talking about using less aerosols in the manufacturing process,” says Dave Peer, vice president of client services of Chicago-based Hinda Incentives. “The old [tube] televisions were made with heavy metals like mercury,” he adds. The transition to digital-only television broadcasts will accelerate that movement, he predicts, convincing more consumers to upgrade to new flat-screen televisions. The transition should push redemption of flat-screen TVs in incentive and consumer loyalty programs this year, he notes.
It’s also pushing manufacturers to pursue power-saving technologies like OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TV screens, which have another benefit—they are far thinner and lighter than even normal flat-screen TVs that use LCD or plasma technology.
Greener, Thinner, Wireless TV Sony is part of the green electronics trend this year, according to Jimmy Beyer, national sales manager of the firm’s Premium Incentive Sales Group. At the beginning of the year, “Sony introduced three ‘Eco TV’ models that use 30 percent less power than LCD televisions,” Beyer says. “They use a motion sensor—if you’re not in the room, they turn off. And there is no power drain in standby mode.”
Sony’s eco-friendly Bravia VE5 television set, meanwhile, has a light sensor that allows it to use less energy by dimming the picture in darkened rooms, in which the brightness suitable for a sunlit room is unnecessary. This feature is shared by the latest V line of Bravia HDTVs that debuted this spring. All three Bravia lines (V, S, and L—as well as the forthcoming VE5) will feature Sony’s Motionflow 120 Hz refresh technology for a smoother picture with rapidly moving images in sports broadcasts and action movies. They also will exceed the government’s Energy Star 3.0 requirements. The VE5 will be available by fall.
Samsung’s line of LED televisions uses less electricity than other technologies, particularly plasma, Peer says. More broadly, Samsung, along with fellow Korean electronics maker LG, is emerging as a serious player in the American HDTV market, Peer says. Hinda now does “solid business” with the firm, he adds, noting, “Samsung is really on the upswing in terms of brand awareness and perception of quality.” And it prices its products aggressively. “In today’s market, when you think Samsung you think TVs,” he says.
Another innovation coming to the flat-screen TV market this year is OLED technology—a step beyond LED. “The brightness, sharpness, clarity, and thinness were impressive,” says Ed Rivera, senior director of national product sales of Pinebrook, NJ-based Rymax Marketing. He notes that a prototype he saw earlier this year was only as thick as three stacked credit cards.
While OLEDs are coming, prices for LCDs are dropping, says Peer. “A few years ago, a lot of LCDs were priced out of programs,” he says. That’s no longer true, especially with sub-40-inch LCDs, he adds. HDTV’s advance is pushing the adoption of wireless receivers that allow installation of surround sound systems without a bunch of wires dangling from the TV sets, which more homeowners are hanging like picture frames.
“People want the new TVs to look clean,” Rivera says. “No wires will be a big deal.” An offshoot of this clean look is the growing popularity of 5.1 surround sound from slim and neat soundbars that replace multiple speakers.
Some perennial favorites are still redeeming as well as ever. “There’s no falloff in the iPod, and Bose [QuietComfort noise-canceling] headphones are still very strong,” Peer says. The iPod may be the dominant digital music player—even Sony is seeing strong sales of its docking stations and speakers designed for it, Beyer says—but there are challengers. Sony’s new NWZ-X1000 Walkman video and MP3 player offers Wi-Fi Internet connectivity, electronic noise cancellation, and a three-inch OLED touch screen that has “really incredible picture quality,” Beyer says. Sony’s stand-alone headphones—noise-canceling and conventional—are also seeing strong redemption in price points from $50 to $500.
Laptops: Thinner and Smaller Notebook PC redemptions have been getting stronger and stronger in the incentive market in the past two years, and the reason, according to Beyer, is that they are “the new digital camera.” He explains, “People don’t want to share a computer anymore. The kids each have one, dad has one, mom has one.”
Apple has been moving aggressively into the incentive market with its MacBook line—particularly the 3-pound, 0.75-inch-thick MacBook Air. The new 17-inch MacBook Pro, meanwhile, has an eight-hour battery that Apple claims lasts three times as long as a standard laptop battery.
The newest category in laptops is the netbook. These are smaller than subcompact notebooks, generally with eight-inch screens and can be either very small, fully featured models or less-powerful devices capable of little more than Web surfing, e-mail, and light office document work. A netbook is intended as a second computer that complements a more powerful but less portable home computer.
Sony’s versions have “eight-inch screens but are full-powered,” Beyer says. “Built around full-size keyboards, they can do it all but fit in a coat pocket.” Its Vaio P Series Lifestyle laptops are 1.4 pounds; come in a variety of colors; have several connectivity options, including Wi-Fi and built-in mobile-phone antenna (WAN) for Web connectivity anywhere; and feature GPS navigation for services like driving directions.
Of course, stand-alone GPS navigation devices from TomTom and Garmin are still very strong redeemers, and the newest models are becoming more full-featured and larger. Screen sizes have grown to as large as six by nine inches, and Internet connectivity from TomTom’s GO 740 Live and Garmin’s Eco Route software, which calculates the most-fuel efficient route, has appeared.
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