Bill Matthies

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The Deflationary Consumer Electronics Industry

There are a number of websites that provide historical average prices for any number of things. For example, in 1975 the average price of a new vehicle in the US was approximately $4,200, which seems cheap compared with today. In 2010 the average was just more than $29,000, or just less than 700 percent more than in 1975. However, based on annual inflation since then, the $4,200 1975... More

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The Lesson Book for Consumer Electronics

The book retailing industry has certainly changed hasn’t it? According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, the number of book retailers in the US declined 26% during the period 2000-2008, the most recent period for which there is published data.  Certainly bad and we intuitively know things have gotten even worse since.  Borders has already or is in the process... More

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Not Exactly Time To Pop The Champagne Cork

Based on their January 2011 Industry Forecast, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) tells us the home audio segment appears to be in good shape (year-to-year unit sales up 27 percent, dollars up 37 percent). That could be, but it’s nothing to get too excited about given how bad things were the previous year. One-third growth from “just shoot me” is not a high bar... More

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Baby Boomers!

Most accounts say there are 70 million or so of the original 79 million Boomers born during the Baby Boom years, 1946-64 still alive. That is70 plus million with a whole lot of purchasing power, the last two years notwithstanding. We are many things, “older” being but one, but also a long, long list of other adjectives including “consumers”. Many CE marketers I... More

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The Lessons Of Social-Media Failure

The following appeared in the Jan. 12 online edition of Home Media Magazine. “Netflix said it is halting a two-year-old program with Facebook that encouraged subscribers to share movie and television program ratings on the social media behemoth’s website. ” ‘Very few of you have signed on for this so we’re pulling it back today to regroup, which includes... More