Consumer electronics buck trend

Flat panel monitors and games consoles drive demand

The UK consumer electronics market had a record year in 2005, despite other retail sectors suffering, market watcher GfK Retail & Technology has revealed.

“Despite some doom and gloom in other retail sectors, consumer electronics bucked the trend and closed the year with a nine per cent value growth and passed the £5bn turnover mark for the first time,” said John Binks, commercial director, European product manager consumer electronics at GfK.

The main drivers of the growth in 2005 were flat panel TVs and MP3 players. For 2006, GfK has forecasted that in Western Europe, the top six growing products in consumer electronics will be LCD TVs, games consoles, plasma TVs, set top boxes, DVD recorders and MP3 players.

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