The New York Times has a cool visualization chart on its site Wednesday showing how the world population spends its discretionary income.
It highlights per capita spending on clothing and footwear, electronics, alcohol and tobacco, household goods, and recreation. At Crave, we obviously zeroed in on electronics spending, and the results seemed predictable at first: the U.S. spends an ungodly amount of money on electronics: $162 billion a year. "Electronics, " by the way, are defined here as PCs, TVs, stereos, and camera equipment. Cell phones, notably, are not included.
The U.K., France, Germany, and Russia also spend a lot on gadgets, between $24 billion and $44 billion each. But the data gets interesting when you compare what countries spend relative to another category. Australia, for instance, spends $12.2 billion a year on electronics, which is a drop in the bucket compared with what the U.S. spends. But it also spends $16.6 billion on the more mainstream category of clothing/footwear, only 1.4 times more than it puts down for electronics.
The U.S., for comparison's sake, spends $429 billion on clothing, or 2.6 times more on clothing than gadgets.
Even more fascinating is Japan, where they spend 4.2 times more on new jeans or shoes than new TVs or computers: the country spends $75 billion per year on clothing, and $17.7 billion on electronics.
Check out the electronics section of the chart below, or head over to the NYT to see the whole thing.
(Via Gizmodo)
CNET, which publishes CNET News, announced on Tuesday its partnership with the Consumer Electronics Association on the new CEA-CNET Consumer Sentiment Indexes. It's intended to be an economic index for researchers, academics, the media, and the tech industry to use as an indicator of economic climate and outlook.
The Consumer Sentiment Indexes measure general consumer confidence, plus industry expectations.
(Credit: CEA and CNET)Consumer confidence in the tech industry doesn't always go hand in hand with standard economic bellwethers. Difficult economic circumstances certainly haven't tempered the world's appetite for shiny new toys, if Apple's iPhone 3G is any indicator.
After 18 months of research, the Consumer Sentiment Indexes' numbers for July have been released, along with the announcement of the index itself. Each edition of the indexes consists of two figures: as the Index of Consumer Expectations, or ICE, handles general consumer confidence, the Index of Consumer Technology Expectations, or ICTE, is specific to the tech and electronics industries. In July 2008, for example, ICE was measured at 165.5, almost 2.5 points lower than the previous month. The ICTE, on the other hand, was 81.7, about the same as June 2008.
The Consumer Electronics Association is the trade group responsible for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), a massive exposition held each January in Las Vegas.
August's CEA-CNET index figures are set to be released on the 26th of the month, and rollouts of future editions are scheduled for 10 a.m. ET on the fourth Tuesday of each month.
Compelling gadgets are the key to consumers' hearts--and wallets--during a recession, according to a consumer spending study.
Of those surveyed, 37 percent of U.S. consumers say they plan to cut back when it comes to entertainment purchases this year, according to an upcoming report from The NPD Group, "Entertainment Trends in America." Just under half of the 11,000 interviewed for the study said they'll likely spend the same amount this year as in 2007.
But what's more interesting is that 18 percent say they plan to spend more, despite widespread concerns over an unstable economy. More specifically, respondents in that group say they see themselves buying gadgets more than content.
"These are the people who tend to be in a higher economic situation so the cost of technology may not be such a barrier for them, whether it's a Blu-ray player or a gaming console or a new iPod," said Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD. "Those are the things they seem to be anticipating purchasing...That's not to say they're not going to buy movies or music, but their expectation is if they're spending more, they're spending on devices and consumer electronics."
In the recession in 2001, spending on entertainment devices and content remained relatively steady, but this time around, as the price of gas and food continues to climb, the landscape of the consumer electronics industry is very different.
In 2001, there was a new PlayStation game console, and DVD and CD sales were still on the upswing.
"What you're looking at now that's different, especially in music is CD sales have been down pretty significantly. DVD is starting to look like a mature product category," said Crupnick. "The willingness of people in bad times to collect things is less than it was five, six, seven years ago."
New Google Earth layer is designed to shed light on the location of multimillion-dollar congressional pet projects.
Politicians are famous (infamous, some would say) for setting aside billions of federal taxpayer dollars each year to bankroll pet projects in their home districts. Now it's possible to map precisely where at least some of those funds may be headed.
The Sunlight Foundation on Tuesday released a downloadable Google Earth layer that plots what it says are some 1,500 earmarks attached to a proposed U.S. House of Representatives defense spending bill. The Washington-based group describes its mission as promoting political transparency through use of Internet technologies.
Once activated, each project shows up on the layer in the form of a yellow push pin. Click it, and you'll be taken to a Web site called EarmarkWatch.org, which keeps a database of who's responsible for the handout, how much is being proposed, and for what purpose.
This bill, not surprisingly, seems to be heavy on military tech-related projects. (We're talking things with names like "ubiquitous RFID chem/bio detection," "semi-autonomous robotic manipulation and sensing," and "remote explosive analysis and detection system.") Also unsurprising is that many of the points appear to be clustered around districts represented by influential politicians (for example, western Pennsylvania, home to Rep. John Murtha, the 37-year Marine Corps veteran and Pennsylvania Democrat who's chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Committee).
The bill's still wending its way through Congress, so the spending plans aren't quite final yet. According to the group Citizens Against Government Waste, which also tracks so-called pork barrel spending, the proposed bill contained nearly $8 billion worth of earmarks as of late May.
Check out the map to decide for yourself whether the politicians have wise plans for your tax dollars--or whether it's just a load of pork.
(Credit:
Alienware)
This morning Alienware officially announced a Special Edition of its Area-51 m5790 desktop-replacement laptop. What's so special about it? You can now order the m5790 with an overclocked Core 2 Duo processor, boosting its frequency to 2.66GHz. The company claims the overclocked Core 2 Duo will run up to 20 percent faster than the previous-generation Core Duo processors. The hot chip is paired with a high-performance ATI Mobility Radeon X1900 graphics card (which has 256MB of dedicated memory) and room for up to 2GB of swift 667MHz RAM. A 17-inch wide-screen display, with a 1,920x1,200 native resolution, complements the built-in Blu-ray drive, and if you're feeling flush with cash, you can stuff the laptop's two hard drive bays with 7,200rpm drives and up to 400GB of capacity.
Alienware says it wants to provide an "elite multimedia experience" with the m5790, and elite it is. Very, very elite. Though the laptop's starting price is a palatable $1,299, upgrading to the highest-end component options will bring you more in the $4,000 range (the overclocked processor alone adds $800 to the base price). Given the price of CNET stock (cough), we don't think a tricked-out m5790 will be showing up in the Crave household anytime soon--but we can always dream.
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