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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BillyG who wrote (33846)	6/15/1998 10:06:00 AM
From: Don Dorsey	Respond to of 50808

May Is Merry For Video - -June 15, 1998 Absent the glitch in VCR sales, May would have been the kind of booming video hardware sales month not seen since the heady days of 1994, according to CEMA figures showing that direct-view color, TV/VCRs, projection and camcorders all set new May highs. Direct-view color, continuing a recovery from three straight years of declining sales, posted a 10.8% sales increase in May to 1.6 million, breaking the previous 1.51 million record for the month that has stood since 1989. Five-month sales of 8.03 million were up 10.2% On a seasonally adjusted basis, May color sales were at a record 25.8 million annual rate and lifted the rate for the first five months to 23.9 million. TV/VCR sales jumped 55% in May to 208,600, for a five-month total of 989,500, up 21.1%. The indicated TV/ VCR seasonal selling rate was 3.2 million, off slightly from April's 3.6 million but bettering the five-month rate of just over 3 million. Projection TV sales totaled 58,900 in May, up 50.1%, and were up 24.5% for the full period to 329,100. May sales were at an indicated annualized rate of 1.3 million, a modest improvement on the 1.1 million average for the year-through-May. VCRs struck the video category's sole sour note in May, as sales declined 9.9% to 1.1 million. But the five-month sales total of 5.83 million was still up 4.1% from last year. Despite the actual sales slippage, the May VCR annualized selling rate was a hefty 16.9 million, though that was off by a million from the five-month rate. Camcorders joined in the May record-setting with a 6.8% rise to 316,900. Sales of 1.54 million through the first five months were up 11.2%. The indicated camcorder selling rate for the month was just under 4.1 million; the five-month rate came in at 4.5 million. DVD players put together the first 40,000-plus back-to-back months, as May sales climbed 76.7% to 47,800, presumably benefiting from the start of volume shipments to such mass merchants as Wal-Mart and Target. Five-month sales of 197,900 were up 105.5% from a 1997 total that included just three months of sales to dealers in only seven markets -- DVD didn't roll out nationally last year until the end of August.