The Canon Consumer Digital Lifestyle Index has revealed some interesting facts in terms of what products in 2008 earned the most revenue, had the most growth and which products saw the biggest price reductions.

According to the report, the highest revenue earners in the second half of 2008 were flat panel TVs, in particular LCDs.

LCD televisions accounted for 32 per cent of digital retail spending in 2008, which is up 3 per cent on the 2nd half 2007. Plasma also fared well with 17 per cent share of the market, down 1 per cent. This is mainly accountable to their higher price points in comparison to other products.

Games consoles were the only other category to increase their share in the market, up 3 per cent to 15 per cent total share.

Other products which suffered losses in shares, but still remained high on the list were digital cameras with 13 per cent and digital camcorders with 4.1 per cent total share.

Now in terms of growth, gaming consoles lead the way with a 47 per cent increase in units sold (517,000 units in total), followed by plasma TVs with a 46 per cent increase and 100,000 additional units sold in comparison to the same period in 2007. LCDs also witnessed a 42 per cent rise, selling an extra 235,000 units.

Digital cameras is another growing area, with an increase of 317,000 units or 23 per cent, digital media players grew by 16 per cent and digital camcorders increased by 12 per cent.

Categories like DVD players and recorders were down 3 per cent and 6 per cent respectively.

The report also outlined some specifics in relation to price reductions in the industry, with 9 out of the 11 categories tested reporting a lower average price.

The weighted average price erosion over the entire CDLI product category is attributed to 7.7 per cent.

The product categories that suffered the biggest decreases where: Plasma TVs which were down 25 per cent, LCDs down 17 per cent and digital media players which fell 12 per cent on average.

Digital cameras and Camcorders also witnessed a 10 per cent and 17 per cent drop respectively.

One of the categories which remained relatively resilient was gaming consoles, which only suffered an average drop of 3 per cent.