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If the latest sales data are any indication, the videogame industry may be headed for a rough holiday season. NPD Group reports that revenue from consoles and software plummeted during October, falling 16.4 percent from September and 19 percent year-over-year. It was the industry’s seventh consecutive monthly decline.

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Reporting second-quarter results earlier this year, Microsoft cited “a continued shift to lower-priced netbooks” as one factor degrading its financial performance. The netbook’s ascension meant, and continues to mean, that Windows client-licensing revenue is down. So the company will surely be aghast to learn that netbook sales are growing twice as quickly as those of full-sized laptops.

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“For something we pulled together in six months, we are very pleased with the satisfaction we got. The satisfaction for the device was superhigh.” Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said that of the Zune in October 2007. Boy was he ever wrong. MarketWatch reports that revenue at Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices unit, which manages the Zune and Xbox 360, fell 42 percent to about $211 million in its most recent quarter.

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The high-end PC market is not a bad place to be. Just ask Apple, which rules it and with great financial success. According to new stats from NPD Group, Apple now claims 91 percent of the U.S. retail market for personal computers costing more than $1,000. Nine out of 10 dollars spent on such machines in June went to Cupertino.

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Well, nobody is buying Apple’s conservative estimates for this quarter. Certainly not after the release of the latest Mac sales data from NPD Group this morning. Analysts had been calling for Apple to sell 2.45 million Macs in its third quarter. Instead, NPD says the company sold approximately 2.6 million.

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Consumers may have trouble distinguishing netbooks from notebooks, but that’s clearly not preventing people from buying them. DisplaySearch, an NPD Group subsidiary, estimates that netbooks will claim a 20 percent share of the world-wide market in 2009.

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What’s the difference between a netbook and a notebook? If you know the answer, you’re in the minority…of netbook owners. According to a survey by market research outfit The NPD Group,
60 percent of consumers who purchased netbooks assumed they would function just like regular laptops. Consequently, only 58 percent were satisfied with their purchases.

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2009 may prove to be the year that Blu-ray caught on. Sales of the high-definition DVD players, sluggish throughout 2008, are surging in 2009. According to the latest metrics from the NPD Group, sales of standalone Blu-ray disc players in the United States rose 72 percent from the first quarter of 2008, driven by an increasing awareness of the technology.

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Question for you: What was the best-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2009? What’s that? Apple’s iPhone? Wrong. According to market researcher NPD, it was Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Curve, which slipped past the iconic device in market share bolstered by Verizon’s Buy One, Get One promotion.

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Quite a franchise, that Rock Band. According to new stats from the NPD Group, the music videogame has surpassed $1 billion in North American retail sales, making it the No. 1 title of 2008 by revenue across all game genres. Not bad for a product that’s been around just 15 months.

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In a month when some 533,000 jobs were lost nationwide, Americans bought an astonishing amount of videogame paraphernalia–$2.91 billion worth, according to market research outfit NPD Group. That’s a 10 percent increase over November 2007. Said NPD analyst Anita Frazier, “With $16 billion realized for the year so far through November, the industry is still on pace to achieve total year revenue of $22 billion in the U.S.”

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Get this: Apple’s iPhone 3G is now the second best-selling mobile handset in the U.S. According to NPD Group, the device outsold the BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl and Palm Centro between June and August to claim about 17 percent of the U.S. smartphone market. Moreover, about 30 percent of stateside customers who purchased an iPhone 3G during that period switched mobile carriers to do so.

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