On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

Google unveils its for-free live sat-nav for mobiles.

Google promises free real-time, turn-by-turn directions for people following their phones. The Motorola Droid will be their 1st mobile equipped.

Maps Navigation includes a search engine to find addresses, Street View gives photos of locations and live traffic data make the system state-of-the-art.TomTom mobile sat-nav app now costs up to 67 euro so TomTom warns of lower prices. Stock prices for both TomTom and Garmin fell with Google's announcement. 

Go Google Maps Navigation

NEW YORK, the city that never sleeps has a new attraction.

Best Buy opens its first 24-hour-shop near New York's Union Square on November 13th.

The store (48,000 sq. ft.) will be open 24-hours from Monday through midnight Saturday but open on Sundays only from 10 am to 8 pm.

Go Best Buy

Gartner thinks PC sales will do better…

Earlier this year Gartner expected a PC decline of -12% but now it's only - 2% (285m units in 2009).

WW 80.9m units shipped in 3Q 09, a 0.5% increase from Q3 08.

EMEA showed a double-digit decline in Q3 as PC shipments fell to 26m units, a -10.1% from Q3 2008.

But Europe declined only 4.5% Q-to-Q, an indication of bottoming out of the slump and a modest return to seasonal patterns.

Go Gartner PC Research

With 19% of global sales in Technical Consumer Goods (TCG), this year, Europe now leads No. America (18%). European sales went up to US$131 billion (2% more than 2008), while No. America declined 12%.

The combined market for mobile phones, TVs and PCs hits US$681 billion WW but the financial crisis causes -2% compared to 2008 (which was up 12% from 2007)

Impressive climbing in Japan (+19%), dramatic decline in Eastern Europe (- 36%) are evident in this GfK report based on reports from 400,000+ retailers WW.

Sales of LCD TVs reach 145m in 2009 compared to 108m in 2008, says GfK Retail and Technology in this first report from their WW database for IT, Telco and CE.

Go GfK Retail and Technology