Microsoft earlier this week made a point of noting that there have been 40 million downloads of Windows 8 since it launched a month ago, putting it ahead of where Windows 7 was at the same point in its sales cycle. But according to figures out today from NPD, in the midst of an overall slowdown in PC sales, this is not translating into robust hardware sales in the influential U.S. market. → Read More
Some well-timed research out from NPD, just in time for Google gearing up for its I/O event, where it is announcing news about Google TV, new wireless devices and Android. The researchers say that TV consumption on tablets has more than doubled in the last year in the 14 markets that it surveys, and 70 percent of consumers now say they watch video on devices other than TVs. The device leading the… → Read More
Another day, another take on Amazon and Apple duking it out in the tablet market. The data comes from NPD’s DisplaySearch wing, and the results don’t come as much of a shock. By their count, Apple is still sitting at the top of the heap, accounting for 59.1 percent of the tablets shipped in Q4 2011 while Amazon is sitting pretty in second place with 16.7 percent of tablet shipments under their… → Read More
The PC industry is in decline, unless of course you count tablets. NPD is apparently doing just that, leaving Apple in the top spot among mobile PC vendors.
According to the firm, Apple shipped nearly 23.4 million mobile PCs in the fourth quarter of 2011, which is 128 percent year-over-year growth. Cupertino shipped over 62.8 million mobile PCs over the entirety of 2011, representing 132… → Read More
Post-PC era? Here we come: According to new data from NPD, tablet PC shipments are expected to grow from 72.7 million units in 2011 to 383.3 million units by 2017. For comparison purposes, worldwide PC shipments for 2011 were 352.8 million, after seeing a 6% decline in Q4.
While those numbers are remarkable enough on their own, what’s really interesting is where much of the growth will come… → Read More
Videos on the iPad and other tablets look great, and increasingly apps are being created specifically for watching videos on tablets. There is just one problem: they cannot be found by search. This problem is true for information in all apps in general, but it is particularly one for video.
A couple weeks ago, I moderated a panel at Beet.TV’s Video Strategy Summit where this topic came up. In… → Read More
The NPD Group, the organization that tracks sales data for the video game industry in North America, says that it plans to track digital sales data in the future. It’s a pretty big deal because, up until now, NPD has only tracked physical, retail sales. If you buy a brand new copy of Madden or Dragon Quest from Best Buy, yeah, that data will be represented in the monthly “top-selling games”… → Read More
Sigh. Call of Duty: Black Ops is now the best selling video game of all time, at least according to NPD. Activision has sold 13.7 million units since its release last November. Billions and billions served, etc. → Read More
There’s two big stories coming out of November’s NPD numbers. The first is that Microsoft somehow managed to sell more Xbox 360s than Nintendo sold Wiis, with Microsoft selling 1.37 million to Nintendo’s 1.27 million. That’s probably the result of the Kinect. The second is that, yes, Call of Duty: Black Ops sold a whopping 8.4 million units. Good on Activision, swimming in piles of coin. → Read More
You know how every month you see stories like “Red Dead Redemption sells X copies, Super Mario Galaxy 2 sells Y copies,” etc? All of that data comes from the NPD Group, which tracks retail sales. What NPD never used to track was digital download sales—Steam and the like. That’s why’d you see doom-and-gloom stories like, “PC game sales fall 50 percent last month.” Yeah, because… → Read More
The NPD released a new report that says, essentially, consumers have no idea what the hell a “netbook” is. Something like 60 percent of consumers who bought a netbook thought that it would have the same capabilities as a notebook. Even more troubling for the companies who produce netbooks is that only 58 percent people who bought a netbook instead of a notebook were satisfied with their… → Read More
Yikes, not a the best month for our beloved video game industry. Sales were off some 17 percent compared to last year, but let’s not forget that a little game called Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out in March, 2008. That may have skewed the numbers a bit. → Read More
The August NPD numbers are out, and to no one’s surprise Madden NFL ’09 was the biggest seller of the month, with EA moving some 2.3 million units. August is sorta a slow month for the video game industry, as folks enjoy the last throws of summer, spending less on hardware and software. That said, as far as hardware goes, the Nintendo DS saw the most sales (518,300). Following that was… → Read More
This month’s NPD numbers don’t officially come out until Thursday, but a single note written by Lazard Capital’s Colin Sebastian has prompted all sorts of knee-jerk reactions. Lazard says it’s possible that the Wii could see a decline in sales for the month of July. Now, that’s not necessarily because demand has gone down, but could merely be a function of pre-holiday… → Read More
According to NPD research, the Flip is the #1 selling camcorder in the US, beating out such stalwarts as Sony and JVC. The Flip is the YouTube compatible video camera that is so simple even a retarded monkey could use it. The Flip—so popular because of the cam’s ease-of-use, low cost and instant publication capabilities—leapfrogged into the digital marketplace, creating a whole new… → Read More
Despite breaking sales records left and right, GTA IV didn’t cause any measurable uptick in console sales. That probably hurts Sony more than Microsoft, seeing as though the GTA series has, since GTA III, been seen as a PlayStation franchise; Sony was expecting PS3-holdouts to see the game and buy a system. Didn’t happen. In fact, sales of the Xbox 360 version nearly doubled those of… → Read More
You would never be able to tell, but Ars Techina has obtained documents (read: an e-mail sent to its employees) proclaiming iTunes as the largest music retailer in the U.S., passing even Wal-Mart. As of January 2008, iTunes now accounts for 19 percent of music sales here, to Wal-Mart’s 15 percent and Best Buy’s 13 percent. (AmazonMP3 is fourth.) Those numbers include online stores… → Read More
Matt Richtel wrote a quick piece on Sony’s crowing — then cowering — this week as the NPD sales numbers placed the PS3 far below 360 and Wii. Dave Karraker, the Sony spokesman who predicted the PS3 would overtake the 360, told me that: (1) He was only wrong by a bit, and (2) NPD doesn’t provide an exact count but estimates some portions of the market and (3) No, he would not… → Read More
It wasn’t the $600 price point or the lack of systems at launch that kept Sony’s PlayStation 3 from becoming a smash hit. Not according to Sony Computer Entertainment America anyway. The company is blaming poor sales of the PS3 on the media – or more accurately the lack of media. GameDaily is reporting that Sony is putting the blame on the lack of new software available this spring for their… → Read More
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