Tech bargains may be going the way of jobs, housing, food

The NPD Group is reporting that consumer electronics sales will fall .6% while prices of gadgets to go up in reaction to the Great Depression II.

The death of Circuit City and the rise in component prices promise to add 2 to 23% to the prices of the average gadget, making the days of a new TV every few years merely a happy memory. Gear was cheap because we had a perceived surfeit of credit and/or money. Now that we have little of either, it doesn’t make sense to buy a Shuffle thereby lowering demand.

Prices have gone down quite quickly over the past few years but expect those prices to level off this and next year.