Hasta La Gadget!

The extensive adoption of the Blu-ray format wasn’t going to happen without some serious deals. And it looks like the perfect muddy bath that is the economic recession and the yearly Black Friday deals finally made it happen.

Consumer’s diligent search for the cheapest Blu-ray players during Black Friday led to the best sales in the format’s history, market analysts at DisplaySearch are reporting this week.

According to their findings, consumers bought about 147,000 Blu-ray players in the week leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday (not including PS3s). The average price of the Blu-ray players sold was a bit over $200, almost exactly half of the average price of the players from a year ago. So it definitely paid to wait out the Blu-ray-HD DVD format war that was going on at this time last year.

But the most revealing stat is this one: 85% of all the Blu-ray players sold were from Sony and Samsung, both of which finally gave in and offered quality players at low prices ranging from $180 to $200. The majority of the players they sold were the cheap ones.

This shows consumers are more comfortable investing in a young format with brands they know, but are also savvy enough to discern appropriate price values. But it’s bad news for lesser-known companies that positioned their even cheaper players as a better alternative. When there’s only an $70 difference between the cheapest Sony and a cheap Magnavox Blu-ray, they tended to go for the larger name.

But it’s not like every player being sold is a Blu-ray – they only accounted for 25% of video players sold during the week. Sales of DVD players, at about $40 each, also tripled regular sales.

This is a reflection of the main problem Blu-ray has faced in the last few months and one we highlighted two months ago: In the minds of many people, Blu-ray is still not a profound improvement over DVDs and they see no reason to move onto a new format.

Still, according to DisplaySearch research director Paul Gagnon, Blu-ray player sales will go up to 5.31 million in 2009, from about 700,000 in 2007. That’s a huge jump that will only be facilitated by the only fact that really matters: format adoption is a reflection of the price, and the bigger the drops by big-name companies, the closer we get to the burial of the DVD. 

Philips has trickled news about these DAPs over the past few months, but things just got real, man. The Raga is a completely nondescript flash player with 2GB or 4GB of flash storage, a tiny multi-line display, 27 hours of battery life and a $35 or $45 price tag; the Spark steps things up with a fancy 1.5-inch OLED color screen, clix-style navigation and $50 / $60 price points; while the LUXE (pictured) adds Bluetooth and style into the mix for $90 or $100. Spark and LUXE both offer Rhapsody integration and some new “FullSound” EQ tech from Philips, but the real hotness is the LUXE. The player can clip to your clothing and pump tunes as would be expected, but also syncs up with your phone to allow you to interrupt the music and answer calls without ever swapping out your headphones. We got to play around with a couple versions Philips had on display, and it really does look the part — though we wouldn’t mind it a bit slimmer. The Spark looks nice and really does offer a good amount of screen for the size — plus we’re suckers for the clix interface — but the Raga looks like the red-headed, overweight stepchild of the lineup. LUXE will be available in January, but the other two should be hitting store shelves now. Check out our hands-on shots in the gallery below. Or don’t, we’re not the boss of you.

Filed under: Portable Audio

Philips debuts new GoGear lineup: Raga, Spark and LUXE originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Steve Jobs will not appear at Macworld in January 2009 for his usual keynote. Apple announces the company will pull out of the trade show as of 2010.br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
br clear=”both” style=”clear: both;”/
a href=”http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=14298d004f9b82ba9fdcf88bebbc8d24p=1″img alt=”” style=”border: 0;” border=”0″ src=”http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=14298d004f9b82ba9fdcf88bebbc8d24p=1″//a
img src=”http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=14298d004f9b82ba9fdcf88bebbc8d24″ style=”display: none;” border=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″ alt=””/
pa href=”http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/gadgets?a=cVWUVd”img src=”http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/gadgets?i=cVWUVd” border=”0″/img/a/pdiv class=”feedflare”
a href=”http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired/gadgets?a=FiCUO”img src=”http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired/gadgets?i=FiCUO” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired/gadgets?a=bUuqo”img src=”http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired/gadgets?i=bUuqo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired/gadgets?a=DyImo”img src=”http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired/gadgets?i=DyImo” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired/gadgets?a=S9TlO”img src=”http://feeds.wired.com/~f/wired/gadgets?i=S9TlO” border=”0″/img/a
/divimg src=”http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/gadgets/~4/487033034″ height=”1″ width=”1″/

The era of the Macworld Stevenote is over.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

This post was updated at 2:30 p.m. PST with more details, and at 6:15 p.m. with IDG’s reaction.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has given his last keynote address at Macworld in San Francisco.

The company announced on Tuesday afternoon that January’s Macworld would mark its last year participating at the show, which is run by publishing company IDG. In addition, Apple said Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, will deliver the keynote, usually handled by Jobs.

Apple representative Steve Dowling declined to comment on Jobs’ health, a prominent topic of discussion this year. Jobs’ keynote addresses at Macworld have become almost legendary events, launch pads for some of the company’s most important products and strategies. His absence from what many in the Apple community consider their Super Bowl will once again revive rumors that Jobs is ill.

“Phil is giving the keynote because this will be Apple’s last year at the show,” Dowling said. “It doesn’t make sense for us to make a major investment in a trade show we will no longer be attending.”

Apple seems to be declaring that it no longer needs industry events like Macworld to get its message out. The company has 250 retail stores around the world that draw millions of people a week, and its Web site is among the top 10 sites, in terms of traffic, on the Internet.

…

Originally posted at News – Apple

The Bluetooth-enabled Luxe is one of three new MP3 players being unleashed by Philips. Click to see a photo gallery of other new Philips MP3 players.

(Credit: Philips)

Interested in buying a Philips SA1948? How about a Philips SA1929? No. What about a Philips Raga? If that last one sounds …