Gadget hounds are in luck this holiday season. Struggling consumer electronics retailers are slashing prices on everything from high-definition TVs to pocket camcorders.
“[Consumers are] seeing these wonderful prices based on electronics retailers being scared out of their wits that they’ll be stuck with the products,” says Roger Kay, founder and president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, a technology research firm. Sluggish sales have already forced several consumer electronics chains, including Tweeter, Circuit City and Sharper Image, to seek bankruptcy protection. Hoping to escape a similar fate, retailers are slashing prices to levels they hope consumers won’t be able to resist, says Kay.
The most compelling discounts are on big-ticket items, in particular high-definition TVs and Blu-ray players, says Danielle Levitas, senior consumer analyst at research firm IDC. The average price of an LCD TV, for example, was $874 in the third quarter of this year, down from $892 a year earlier, according to the NPD Group’s retail tracking service. For plasma TVs, prices have fallen by more than $250 to an average $1,318 from $1,584. However, it’s not just fancy flat screens that consumers will save on. With the exception of Sony’s (SNE: 18.89*, -0.56, -2.87%) PS3 gaming system and pretty much all of Apple’s (AAPL: 94.47*, -1.43, -1.49%) products, Levitas says shoppers can get great deals on just about anything in the consumer electronics category.
Read on by clicking below to see what great deals Smartmoney Magazine has found!