Rebecca Day

While tablets were expected to be the big draw items during Black Friday weekend, maturing categories including TVs and video game consoles did surprisingly well from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, Shawn DuBravac, CEA’s director of research, told us in an interview Tuesday. And although 79 percent of U.S. households own a digital camera, about 32 percent of consumers polled in CEA’s Black Friday survey said they planned to buy a digital camera over the weekend, which DuBravac attributed to new features such as waterproofing, slow motion video and to upgrade buys for D-SLR and mirrorless models. Promotional pricing didn’t hurt, either, he said, as pricing started as low as $20 in at least one sale.

Lutron is continuing its march toward the mainstream customer with what it calls an affordable lighting control product promising energy-saving benefits. Earlier this month the company announced a $29 occupancy sensor that automatically shuts off lights in a room when no one is present (CED Nov 15 p6). On Tuesday Lutron unveiled a remote-controlled electronic shading system that brings technology from Lutron’s $1,000-per-window Sivoia shades for the custom market to a $299-per-window shade that consumers can install themselves.

Consumers who chose sleep over shopping on Black Friday were rewarded with a few deeply discounted electronics on Monday, especially at Panasonic’s website. Club Panasonic, which ran Black Friday pricing through Monday, offered deals on TVs, cameras and home theater systems that were below retailers’ pricing in some cases.

Despite published reports of consumer pushback and the effort of a Target employee with a petition of nearly 200,000 names hoping to change the company’s plans for earlier-than-usual Black Friday hours, midnight openings appeared to have drawn even more than the customary hordes of bargain shoppers, or so our sweep of the Palisades Center mall in West Nyack, N.Y., and other metropolitan New York shopping venues found. Seasoned Black Friday shoppers reported having happily lined up all day Thanksgiving Day, some for as long as 31 hours, to have their crack at a handful of doorbuster electronics.

Bargain-crazed consumers who don’t want to brave the cold and midnight hours Friday will have plenty of alternatives for shopping from the comfort of their own homes. In a year when retailers’ decisions to start Black Friday the instant Thanksgiving is over has resulted in some degree of consumer pushback, those who don’t venture out won’t have trouble landing their mouse on a deal. They may even score free shipping in the process, as Target, Best Buy, Kohl’s, Walmart, Sears, Tiger Direct, Buy.com, and others have instituted free shipping with minimum purchases.

Black Friday has quickly turned into Black Week as retailers are hoping to entice discount-hungry shoppers to make even-earlier holiday purchases. By 10 a.m. Tuesday, Walmart had sold out of a $199 PS3 bundle that went on sale that day combining a 160GB console, two games -- Little Big Planet 2 and Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One -- and a PlayStation Plus 30-day membership.

Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, at the helm for eight weeks, expressed cautious optimism about the company’s potential over the next several years, during the company’s Q4 earnings call Monday. HP profits plunged 91 percent in Q4 to $239 million, from Q4 2010, and the company is “getting back to basics in 2012,” Whitman said. The near-term focus is on driving execution and investing for the future, “but many of the FY ‘11 headwinds are still with us,” Whitman cautioned, saying the company is expecting declines in revenue and profit in fiscal 2012 before realizing “consistent, profitable growth in 2013 and beyond."

Black Friday week began with a flurry of doorbuster promotions, daily deals and some disturbing year-end sales projections for the CE industry.

As its optical disc and PC businesses continue to decline, Dolby is looking to broadcast, e-media, mobile and emerging voice communications technologies to carry the company forward, CEO Kevin Yeaman said in the company’s fiscal Q4 earnings call Thursday. Yeaman cited the current shift from optical disc technology to digital broadcast and e-media, which he said was reflected in the composition of fiscal 2011 licensing revenue.

Traditional TV distribution business models, content discovery and reaching “cord never-havers” are challenges facing the digital video distribution world, said panelists at the Future of Television conference in New York Friday. “The demographics of people signing up for cable and satellite service is changing a lot,” said Jeff Harris, senior product manager-new product development for Verizon’s FiOS.