More on Holiday 2012

I wrote some of my early holiday expectations here. Here are  few additional thoughts and things of note: In my previous post, I mentioned ShopperTrak’s forecast suggesting retail sales would be up 3.3 percent while store traffic would be up 2.8 percent (after being down 2.2 percent last year).  In their same forecast, ShopperTrak estimates […]

A First Glimpse of Holiday 2012

Last week, ShopperTrak was the first out of the gate with official holiday projections. ShopperTrak is expecting holiday retail sales during the November/December period to grow 3.3 percent and foot traffic to increase 2.8 percent over the same period a year-ago. In other holiday-related news, a survey by the consulting firm Hay Group suggests some retailers […]

A few Recent MEMs Applications

I’m a big fan of MEMs and have written frequently about the sensorization of consumer tech.  I recently came across two interesting applications.  The first is Twine and the second is GreenGoose. Twine is a “wireless sensor block tightly integrated with a cloud-based service.” Twine has WiFi, an internal temperature sensor and accelerometer (for vibration and […]

The Impact of the iPhone5 on the US Economy

J.P. Morgan’s chief economist, Michael Feroli, estimated sales of the iPhone5 could boost annualized GDP growth in calendar Q4 by 0.25 to 0.5 percentage points.  You can read more here.

Android Building Among Teen Smartphone Owners

Nielsen recently announced that the majority of teens now own smartphones.  Fifty-eight percent of teens now own a smartphone – up from 36 percent in 2011.  What is perhaps most interesting, is the strength of Android devices among this audience.  According to the same data, 59 percent of teens adopting smartphones in the last three […]

History Lesson: HDTV to 4K

On August 6, 1998 the first HDTV was sold in San Diego.  It was sold by Tom Campbell, who was then Corporate Director at DOW Stereo/Video.  (Footnote: DOW Stereo/Video would later be bought by Ken Crane’s and Tom Campbell would become Corporate Director of Ken Crane’s.  Ken Crane’s ceased operations and liquidated in the summer of […]

100 Places to See

Two great posts on the 50 (and 50 m0re) most famous landmarks on earth. Here are the first 50.  I’ve bolded the 22 I’ve visited:  Blue-domed Church in Santorini St Basil Cathedral in Moscow The Statue of Liberty in New York Machu Picchu in Peru The Taj Mahal in Agra ( India ) The Eiffel […]

CES Trends: 4K

Get ready to hear a lot about 4K TV.  At the 2012 International CES earlier this year we saw 4K (and 8K) television prototypes from a number of OEMs. LG and Sony, among others, are expected to start shipping 4K TV offerings within the month. Around CES there was much written regarding 4K television (see […]