Pandora, the web’s top radio service, continues to record big growth in the number of subscribers and hours of usage. At the same time, subscription service and rival Spotify has also reported spikes in the number of paying customers…
Three months in, the Wii U still is still having trouble getting a foothold in the US market. According to the latest numbers from NPD, reported by Gamasutra, February’s weekly Wii U sales grew around 40 percent over January&rsq…
Today has been full of good news for the music industry — we just heard that revenues grew for the first time since 1999, and now an NPD study claims that free streaming services are helping to reduce peer-to-peer music …
NPD has released its latest data on consumer electronics sales in the US — and it’s not a pretty picture, unless you’re selling smartphones and tablets. Out of the top five categories based on 2012 revenue, only smartpho…
Nintendo has already cut its forecasts for the Wii U after sales failed to meet expectations, and we’re now seeing the extent of the console’s poor performance in the US. The NPD group has released its report for January video…
Is Windows 8 succeeding? We still don’t know for sure, but at least part-time Microsoft chairman Bill Gates seems pleased with the progress of the new operating system. When CNBC asked him whether he’d ever return to Microsoft…
Investors were sent into a panic on Monday, again, as reports from Nikkei and The Wall Street Journal suggested Apple (AAPL) slashed iPhone 5 component orders in half due to weak demand. According to both reports, Apple recently trimmed its iPhone 5 display panel orders from 65 million to around half that figure. BGR pulled the report apart on Monday, and now NPD DisplaySearch analyst Paul Semenza says his sources paint a much different picture of Apple’s recent order cuts. Semenza’s checks with his supply chain sources revealed that Apple did indeed cut its display panel orders for the month of January, but not by 50% as earlier reports had stated. Speaking with The New York Times, the analyst said Apple trimmed iPhone
The PC industry isn’t the only one that had a rough time over the holiday quarter. Per VentureBeat, the latest data from the NPD Group show that video game hardware and software sales in the United States totaled $3.2 billion at retail last month, a 22% decline from the $4.1 billion the industry posted in December 2011. One big culprit in the decline has been the rise of online stores such as Valve’s Steam that give users an alternative to trudging down to their local GameStops to buy new games. As far as hardware sales go, NPD found that Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 remained the best-selling console in December, selling 1.4 million units, followed by Nintendo’s (NTDOY) 3DS at 1.25 million units. Ominously for Nintendo, the company’s
Rumors suggesting Facebook (FB) is working on a smartphone have resurfaced a number of times over the past year. Each time, Facebook denied the various claims. Facebook may indeed still be working on its own phone but as a new report from market research firm NPD Group shows, it probably doesn’t need to. Facebook makes money by gathering information about its users and serving targeted ads based on that data. Allowing users to update Facebook with fresh data as often as possible is obviously beneficial to the company, and smartphones present a terrific opportunity to give users access to their Facebook accounts from anywhere. The more people using Facebook’s mobile apps, the better, and Facebook’s smartphone penetration is absolutely staggering
While some have pegged 2013 as the year of the phablet, the latest report from NPD DisplaySearch paints a different picture. The firm estimates that shipments of tablet PCs will surpass 240 million units worldwide in 2013, topping notebook PC shipments, which are expected to reach 207 million, for the first time ever. Apple (AAPL) has dominated the tablet market since its inception, however NPD predicts that smaller tablets will replace the 9.7-inch iPad as the tablet market leader in 2013. The firm estimates that tablets with a screen size between 7- and 8-inches will account for nearly half the market, or 45%, compared to an estimated 17% share from 9.7-inch slates. NPD previously predicted that tablet shipments would top
