Anderson's Views On CE Products

By Steve Smith On Jul 3 2006 - 6:00am

In his one-on-one talk with Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) president/CEO Gary Shapiro during the CEA CEO Summit, Best Buy vice-chairman/CEO Brad Anderson gave snapshot opinions on a variety of CE product categories and home networking.

Satellite Radio: “I have five subscriptions. It is an incredible product that generates high customer loyalty.”

MP3 Players: “We expect a lot of innovation in the next couple of years with all the competitors trying to fully optimize their advantages.”

Portable Navigation: “We see robust growth and portable navigation products' [sales] potential looks especially good.”

Car Audio: “This is a more challenging target demographic group for us, younger males. Not a big change in the market. There is more capacity to integrate products there.”

His most opinionated comments were about home networking and the industry's shift in that direction. “Products will be connected devices of all sorts in ten years, some wired, some wireless. Ten years from now there will be more installers. This is a shot in the dark, but there will be a lot more 'Geek Squad' agents as well as products that are far simpler to operate.”

When asked by Shapiro about intellectual property protection and the ability of average consumers to be able to make home copies of content and move it around the house, Anderson said, “There has got to be a balance. We must protect industry and the artists. But you can't make home network disappear. Certainly we are aggressive proponents of enabling consumers to move legitimate acquired content around the home [network].”