By Martin Vedris
SYDNEY: The latest Canon Digital Lifestyle Index (CDLI) reveals that Australians spent a record $2.424 billion on digital technologies between January and June of this year, and Canon predicts up to $3.6 billion more sales in the second half.
In an Australian economy that seems to be heading into some degree of recession, with the Australian dollar and the share market falling, and interest rates cut by a full per cent, the sales of digital products are showing no signs of slowing.
In fact, Canon predicts a record spend of $5.5 to $6 billion dollars by the end of 2008, based on the research behind its CDLI. The CDLI is independent research commissioned by Canon and compiled by GfK using information on sales figures (units and dollar value) provided by GfK’s retail audit panel on a selection of digital products.
The result for January to June this year is a 12.1 per cent increase over the same period last year.
“The Australian technology industry is still expanding, experiencing higher sales growth than the retail industry sector as a whole,” said Darren Ryan, Canon Australia assistant general manager – Marketing, Consumer Imaging Products Group.
“I believe the trend can be attributed to the importance of digital technology in our lives — there’s growing need for consumers to have the latest technology and it’s now more accessible than ever.”
The top sales performer remains LCD televisions, accounting for $888 million of total CDLI revenues. In second was plasma televisions at $461 million, digital still cameras ranked third at $276 million with gaming consoles and digital media players achieving $224 million and $204 million respectively.
“Christmas is the largest quarter of the whole year and we don’t expect that to be any different this year," said Canon Australia National PR manager Andrew Giles.
“We still stand by our prediction of a record spend in 2008 on the technology area, with Christmas being the strongest part of the year.”
The CDLI reports on digital still cameras, digital camcorders, inkjet printers, photo printers, DVD players, DVD recorders, games consoles, plasma TVs, LCD TVs, digital media players (including iPods) and multifunction devices (MFD). The index has been measuring uptake of digital devices in Australia since 2003.