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Softening Sony Handycams
Digital Cameras & Camcorders | Jun 29, 05
We're now seeing some price declines for the most popular camcorders on PriceSCAN.com, the Sony Handycam line. This is interesting because many of these only became available early this year, and their technology is fairly close to the state of the art. Let's look at two of these, both with image stabilization, LCD monitor, color viewfinder and remote control.
The Sony DCR-HC42 MiniDV Handycam had a low price of about $500 when we started tracking it in February, and it now retails for less than $435.
Time Period: 2/14/2005 through 6/20/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
Stepping up to the Sony DCR-DVD403 DVD Handycam will run you a bit more at just under $680, but that's still less than the $725 which was the low price at the end of March.
Time Period: 3/21/2005 through 6/20/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
These items demonstrate just how dynamic pricing is in the consumer electronic markets, and why it pays to check this site frequently. These days, if you blink you might miss a price drop.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 11:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
LCD Television Price Crash
Electronics | Jun 23, 05
It has been repeatedly reported in this space that we're seeing a stunning example of a technology price decline in the flat screen television market, particularly for LCD sets. But in the last couple of months, some LCD televisions have dropped so sharply they merit special mention.
Consider for example the Polaroid LCD-2000, a 20-inch model with with HDTV 720 and native resolution of 1280 x 768. At the end of 2004 it was going for about $800, but that price has now been cut by more than 50%, and right now its offered by vendors on PriceSCAN for less than $400.
Time Period: 10/18/2004 through 6/20/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
Or check out a rather more up-market model, the 45 inch Sharp LC-45D4U AQUOS Widescreen LCD Television, with HDTV 1080 and 1920 x 1080 native resolution. In this case the drop is from about $5,500 to under $4,250 currently, a decline of about 23%.
Time Period: 11/29/2004 through 6/20/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
There are scores of similar cases you can find just by exploring LCD televisions here. We seem to be seeing a lot of buying at these price levels, so one wonders if these price declines will continue at this same breakneck pace. So this begs an obvious question – how cheap do LCD's need to get before you'd pick one up?
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 11:00 AM | Comments (5)
Can H-P Keep Printing Money With Ink Cartridges?
Computers | Jun 16, 05
Hewlett-Packard’s decision to separate its computer and printer division is the latest sign of the firm’s unwinding of the strategies of former CEO Carly Fiorina, and has led to much speculation as to the fate of the enterprise created by H-P’s acquisition of Compaq. Yet if the move highlights a failed computer strategy, it also makes clear that the crown jewels of H-P's empire are to be found in its printer business.
Now what’s interesting about this fact is that while the price of printers has fallen dramatically in recent years, the price of ink has actually gone up. According to a 6/14/2005 Wall Street Journal article, the price of ink per milliliter in name-brand cartridges has risen about 1% per year. As can be seen from the graph below, even the lowest vendor price on PriceSCAN for the most popular H-P ink cartridge (the HP C6656AN #56 Blank InkJet Cartridge) has barely declined during a period of nearly three years.
Time Period: 8/19/2002 through 6/13/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
It therefore not surprising that the key to H-P’s printer profits (constituting over 66% of the firm’s earnings) is not in the machines themselves bit in the sale of ink cartridges. However, therein lies a threat to the firm. Recently, many independent providers of cartridges and cartridge refills have emerged, offering ink at steep discounts to the prices charged by H-P, Lexmark and others. These include retail chains that specifically cater to refill needs. In the afore-mentioned Journal piece, the paper found these ink products generally OK, but not quite up to the quality level of H-P. There’s also a point the Journal did not mention, which is that the use of an ink not made by the printer manufacturer generally voids that company’s warranty on the printer.
Yet as printer prices fall, and thus the potential risk of loss due to a voided warranty is diminished, one wonders what will happen to the ink profits of H-P and others, especially if third party ink quality improves just a bit more. I’d like to invite readers to post any experiences they may have had with replacement cartridges or refills – it would be interesting to hear what PriceSCAN users think of these products.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 4:45 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Falling Computer Prices Hold Down Inflation
Computers | Jun 14, 05
Our regular readers know this blog has chronicled a marked decline in the price of many cutting-edge technologies. With today's May Producer Price Index report from the Commerce Department, we get an interesting perspective on how dramatic this fall has been and what effect it's having on the overall inflation rate.
The overall PPI fell 0.6%. That was mostly due to a big decline in energy prices (-3.5%), and indeed, excluding the volatile food and energy sectors, the so-called core PPI rose 0.1%. And that's where tech prices come in. Computer prices were a key factor holding the core rate to this relatively benign level. They dropped in May by a stunning 4.8%, their biggest decline since January. What's driving this plunge? Candidate market forces certainly include low foreign labor costs and the commoditization of computers – Lenovo's purchase of IBM's PC business comes to mind, for example (see Laptops at China Prices and Can Dell Compete With The China Price?). There's more to this tech deflation, however. Despite significant increases in processor speed and abilities (i.e. hyperthreading and dual-core multi-thread architectures – see Core Wars) there have been few new applications introduced that demand these new hardware capabilities. Most of the software that does require such horsepower is in niches like gaming and workstation apps. Without innovative applications to motivate buyers, demand tends to be limited to that produced by overall economic growth and simple lifecycle driven unit replacement. The industry has been hoping for relief from Redmond, but the way Microsoft keeps pushing back the release date for its new operating system (code named Longhorn), one wonders whether we'll see a new Ice Age before it shows up, and I don't mean a sequel from Fox.
Looked at over the last few months, overall pricing data is a bit less friendly, and the markets and the Federal Reserve will likely continue to contend with the risk of accelerating inflation. Those interested in buying computers, however, are enjoying a happy state of affairs, as a casual inspection of the prices in our computer category will attest.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 2:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cheaper GPS For Father’s Day
Electronics | Jun 13, 05
One of the technologies whose price decline has been most impressive over the last couple of years is that of Global Positioning Systems. When you consider that a navigation capability once intended for military and high-end commercial use can now be held in the palm of your hand for less than the cost of many MP3 players, you realize just how dramatic technological deflation can be.
Given that Father’s Day is coming up on Sunday, if you were thinking of helping Dad find his way on that next road trip or camping expedition, you can give him the gift of GPS for a lot less than last year. Just one example, the most sophisticated of Garmin’s ultra-lightweight Geko line, the Garmin Geko 301. It's waterproof and includes an electronic compass and barometric altimeter. It even comes with five interactive games to keep anyone riding shotgun occupied while stuck in traffic. Back in January of last year you would have paid at least $230 for this compact GPS, but it can be purchased today for less than $170, representing a price decline of 26% in about a year and a half.
Time Period: 1/5/2004 through 6/6/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
Many other popular GPS units have seen sharp price declines in the last few months, so even if you sometimes feel like telling your father where to go, you can now give him a gift that will show him exactly how to get there.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 4:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Price Drops On Digital Cameras For Graduation And Summer
Digital Cameras & Camcorders | Jun 9, 05
With graduation season here and the summer solstice approaching, many people are thinking about digital cameras as a gift for a newly minted grad or just to shoot all that fun in the sun. So it makes sense to look at some recent price drops on some of the most popular models on PriceSCAN.com.
For example, back on 2/14/2005 we noted that the 8-megapixel Nikon Coolpix 8800 had dropped in price from around $1,000 last year to around $600. It's now fallen an additional 8% or more, and can be had from vendors for less than $550 (see graph below).
Time Period: 9/27/2004 through 6/6/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
The 8800 features 3264x2248 max resolution, 10x optical zoom, 4x digital zoom, CompactFlash storage, USB connectivity, movie capture and compact flash.
Meanwhile, for those looking for a single lens reflex model, there's the 8.2 megapixel Canon EOS 20D SLR . It's the most popular camera on PriceSCAN, and one which the NY Times notes is the choice of famed photojournalist David Burnett and many of his colleagues. It features 3504x2336 max res, CompactFlash storage, USB 2.0 connectivity and compact flash. As can be seen below, the lowest vendor price for this camera has fallen from about $1,500 back at the end of last summer to under $1,120 today, a drop of more than 25%.
Time Period: 8/23/2004 through 6/6/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
Actually, these are just two examples of the kind of sharp price declines we've seen in state of the art digital cameras over the last few months. Those who've been thinking of buying but were put off by high prices in the past would be well advised to take a second look at the market today. You might find what you want for a lot less.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 4:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Can Intel Help Apple Close Its Price Gap?
Computers | Jun 8, 05
Most of the press on Apple's recent decision to switch from chips made by IBM (in partnership with Motorola) to Intel's x86 line has been discussed in the context of Cupertino's desire to obtain processors that run faster and cooler (the heat problem has been particularly acute for PowerBooks, limiting the speed Apple can offer). Yet perhaps the larger impact may be on the traditional premium Mac users have had to pay to stay out of the Wintel world. To understand just how steep the price of Intel-comparable Apple performance has become, consider that the price of a top of the line PowerBook G4 with a 1.67 Ghz processor, 512 RAM, 100 GB HD, DVD-R drive, modem, 100 BT/802.11g connectivity and 15.2 inch active matrix display is at least $2,250, whereas the Toshiba Satellite M45-S351 with a 1.73 GHz Pentium M, a 15.4 inch active matrix display and comparable other stats goes for a relatively paltry $1,280. To be sure, the PowerBook commands a design premium – it comes in a sleek chassis and weighs only 4.6 lbs compared to the only slightly faster and larger-screened Satellite's 6.5 lbs. But is that design difference worth a grand?
Now, Apple will no longer be buying a niche processor, but rather building their machines around the more commodity-like Intel product. By purchasing x86 processors, Apple should be able to avail itself of Intel's production economies of scale. This should reduce Apple's costs and allow it to lower prices, even accounting for some design premium (hopefully they can switch notebook processors without increasing weight).
In the past, Steve Jobs has had something of a deaf ear when it comes to what price point the market will find acceptable. You know what I mean if you recall the Lisa and Jobs' proposed pricing of the first Macs, not to mention the NeXT machine. Lately, however, he's been spot-on in gauging how to position the iPod, and the rollout of the Mac Mini shows an obvious new interest in low price machines. Apple may even be looking down the road to devices to compete with the IBM-based Xbox. The real question is whether Jobs will choose to pass on his savings on processors to the consumer, sacrificing per unit margin to market share.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 2:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Core Wars
Computers | Jun 7, 05
The battle for dominance in the emerging dual-core processor market was joined a few days ago when AMD started sending out test versions of its new Athlon 64 X2, to compete with Intel's dual-core Pentium D and the dual-core version of the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition chipset released in April. Early buzz from reviewers seems to give much of the edge to AMD, but there's a catch for both. While generally faster than single-core processors when executing multi-threaded programs like some game programs and workstation applications, dual-core processors are actually slower than their single-core brethren for single-threaded applications. There is thus a real question as to how much migration from single-core processors can be expected with this generation of dual-core.
Often, we find that when a new technology is about to be introduced, the market anticipates that release and starts to discount the old state of the art. Thus, one clue regarding the future impact of the current version of dual-core technology might be found by examining the price behavior of state of the art single core processors. Consider the following PriceTrend graph of a single-core Intel Pentium 4 3.4 GHz Extreme Edition (which does support hyper-threading). As you can see, the lowest price offered by a vendor on PriceSCAN actually shows a slight, recent rise in price, so it appears that there is as yet little or no dual-core anxiety in what is still a single-core world.
Time Period: 6/21/2004 through 5/30/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 10:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Google's Picasa 2 - A Free iPhoto Substitute For Windows, Not Macs
Computers | Jun 2, 05
We tend to focus on pricing issues in this blog, and there's no more interesting price than zero. Google just released Picasa 2, a free image management and editing package that indexes the photos and movies on your hard drive, puts them into a searchable database, and lets you make changes including red-eye and color adjustment, crops and orientation adjustment among others. In short, its feature set is similar to that of Apple's iPhoto, but so far Google has only released a Windows version. The omission of a Mac version is interesting – perhaps Google reasons that with most Macs already running iPhoto there's no point in making the investment to try to break into a user base that's already locked up. But the buzz on Picasa 2 is quite good – it's said to be very fast and considerably easier to use than iPhoto, so perhaps they should consider rolling out something Cupertino’s clientele could use. After all, many people buy Macs precisely because they view them as superior platforms for image and media work, and the zero price tag on Picasa helps knock down the barrier to entry.
It's also interesting to consider Picasa 2's effect on Adobe. While more serious enthusiasts might complain that Google's offering might not include all the editing functionality of Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0, for example, it might well be good enough for users with basic needs, impacting Adobe's market share on the low end (e.g. Photoshop Album 2.0), and it is, after all, free.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 4:04 PM | Comments (4)
Hot BBQ, Cool Ice Cream, And Both To Go
Home & Garden | Jun 1, 05
With summer upon us, many are thinking in terms of beach trips, picnics, camping, and so forth. We've come across some portable items that can make that road trip a lot more fun. For all your portable grilling needs, there's the Weber Q Backyard Portable and the Weber Baby Q. Both have push-button ignition, a tubular stainless steel burner, cast aluminum lid and body and easy-grip handles for maximum portability. The Q backyard portable has a 280 square inch cooking area and 12,000 BTU/hour input, while the Baby Q's cooking area is 189 square inches with an 8.500 BTU/hour input. They go for as little as $149.99 and $119.99, respectively, and they are both, well, kind of cute.
And after a barbeque, what hits the spot better than ice cream? Keeping to our theme of portability, consider the Hamilton Beach 1.5 Quart Capacity Cordless Ice Cream Maker. It makes ice cream, gelato and frozen yogurt in 25-40 minutes with no ice or salt needed. It should fit easily inside most freezers and then toted about by its “Go Anywhere” handle. Its yours for under $35.
Posted by jeffrey.trester at 4:49 PM | Comments (0)
