Forget the iPad. It’s not the Samsung S Captivate or the HTC Sound 7 phone either or the Kinect sensor for Xbox.
While sales of Apple’s iPad is expected to hit the roof and Android phones are enjoying so much popularity the top selling tech gifts this year are more likely going to be something of a tech dinosaur.
Countless articles have been written about their demise of CDs and DVDs and more and more computers are actually doing away with optical drives but these storage devices still have such resonance with consumers that CDs and DVDs are next only to clothes and as the favourite item to give as a gift come Christmas time.
A Maritz Canada survey shows that as many as 48 per cent of Canadian consumers this Christmas season will be purchasing CDs and DVDs as gifts. Clothing will be the leading gift choice (52 per cent), followed by gift cards (49 per cent).
Shiny new technology such as the iPads or the latest laptops come under electronics and trail at sixth place (37 per cent) following toys (43 per cent) and beer, wine and spirits (41 per cent). About 33 per cent of respondents plan to give candies and chocolates.
More holiday shoppers are shunning malls. But for non-online shoppers, Walmart will be the leading holiday shopping destination with 66 per cent of shoppers saying they plan to spend an average of $116 at the store. Canadian Tire is second (44 per cent, followed by Zellers (41 per cent), Future Shop (34 per cent) and the liquor and beer stores (34 per cent). Volume pricing is behind all this I guess for both choice of gift and shopping destination.
Flash drives and USB thumb drives may offer better and more secure storage capacity and services such online video services such as Zip.ca and Netflix my be eating away at the DVD movie market, however, I think CDs and DVDs are a hit this Christmas because of two things: they’re cheap; and everyone has a machine that can play them.
Almost every home has a DVD player, millions of cars on the roads still come with a CD player. Although online video games are popular, top titles such as Call to Duty – Black Ops, Halo Reach and Rock Band 3 as well as less popular games are all available on DVD.
A shopper might be happy to wrap a $599 iPad but let’s face it you’re not likely to find six of those under a Christmas tree. On the other hand, a harried guy doing his last minute shopping can almost painlessly swipe his card one more time for say 12 music CDs. True they screen you’re an aging boomer, but CDs are probably just $15 each, easy to carry on the commute and if you lay out four and wrap them together they might actually look like an iPad under the tree.