February 3 Issue of CMP's Computer Retail Week Examines Two Emerging Consumer-Driven Trends at Retail

The February 3 issue of Computer Retail Week reveals two trends emerging at retail: Printer vendors sharing space on the sale floor with digital camera makers, and major computer manufacturers attempting to cash-in on the consumer notebook market. The full text of both stories can also be found on CRWi Online at http://www.crw.com/.

"What we're currently seeing in the retail market is an aggressive response to consumer demands and interests," said Computer Retail Week Editor Kevin Ferguson. "While demand has always been what drives any given market, what's different in the digital printer and consumer notebook category is that manufactures are breaking out from their traditional product offerings to respond to a new crop of product needs."

Senior Editor Doug Olenick mirrors that observation in the opening line of his report, "Market Develops for Photo Printers." Olenick writes, "Consumers' growing desire to create hard copies of their digital photos and scanned images is convincing more and more manufacturers to enter the photo printer market. Some of the first companies to come out with photo printers were the camera makers themselves, including Fuji, Casio and Vivitar. But recently, major printer vendors such as Panasonic, which placed its TruPhoto digital color photo-printer in CompUSA and Staples, have entered the scramble. Others, such as Hewlett-Packard, are likely to follow..."

Examining everything from market competition, future of the category and plans from leading computer manufacturers, Olenick provides an in-depth analysis of the situation and highlights potential problems. Quoting printer analyst Steve Koenig at ARS in Irving, Texas, Olenick writes, "An interesting problem facing vendors is where photo printers should be placed in the store. Because the photo printers are so closely linked with digital cameras, most retailers are merchandising them alongside the cameras and scanners in a separate digital product area. However, other retailers are keeping them with traditional printer products."

Other potential problems Olenick explores include competition between camera stores and computer and consumer electronics stores for sales of digital-imaging products.

While the printer market copes with increased competition, Computer Retail Week Senior Editor Gregory Quick reports that the notebook category will soon also be a bit more crowded. In a separate report, "Notebooks Not Just For Business Anymore," Quick writes, "Sony, Fujitsu and NEC are soon expected to introduce consumer-oriented notebooks, inspired by Compaq's fourth-quarter success in this emerging product segment. Each vendor has a different timetable for its introduction...but all have realized the segment is poised for growth."

Although these manufacturers are convinced the consumer notebook market is ripe with opportunity, others are less optimistic. On this position, Quick quotes Ron Smith, Vice President of Marketing for Toshiba. "We are learning from our desktop users, getting a whole new level of input that will move down to our notebooks. But technologies like DVD that are driving convergence require a lot of power. In practical terms, that means Toshiba will continue to target the small business/home office market and enjoy whatever incremental consumer sales come its way. It is already a good supplemental market for us."

"You can be sure that whichever way these categories go, boom or bust, Computer Retail Week will be covering the news as it unfolds," Ferguson said.

Computer Retail Week is the leading newspaper for technology retailers. It provides critical information about new alliances, technologies and products for a wide audience of computer hardware and software retailers, mass merchants, software specialty stores and other Channel members. For the past six years, Computer Retail Week has delivered breaking news weekly throughout the year. Breaking news stories can be viewed by visiting Computer Retail Week's home page -- CRWi -- at http://www.crw.com/.

CMP Media Inc., now in its 26th year of uninterrupted growth, is the only provider of publishing, marketing and information services to reach the entire spectrum of the high-technology market -- the builders, sellers and users of technology. With sales of $418 million in 1996, CMP has marked its quarter century of success with an average yearly growth of 20 percent. All of CMP's publications and a series of innovative news and interactive services, are available on the World Wide Web through CMP's TechWeb*, http://www.techweb.com/, the industry's first free daily technology news and interactive services super site, since 1994. CMP Media is also the creator of NetGuide Live (http://www.netguide.com/), the first comprehensive daily online guide to the Net, and First-TV (http://www.first-tv.com/), the Internet's first 24-hour TV/video network.

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SOURCE: CMP Media Inc.

CONTACT: Leslie Dunbar of CMP Media, 516-562-7040 or ldunbar(at)cmp.com