We have had several calls and emails from suppliers now who have eaten their shorts already and are now being forced to raise prices. Those products which were sailing nicely under the US dollar in particular are about to hit the rocks and suffer a substantial price hike.

In an environment where the Aus dollar has gone from 97c to 66c against the greenback in two months this is a surprise to no one. I do believe it will mean however that the halcyon days everything getter better and cheaper are now gone. CE consumers in Australia have "never had it so good" in terms of pricing. Never has in the field of human endeavour has so much been bought for so little ... well I'm sorry baby but its all over now ...

I think we will see this on a broad scale particularly within the TV mass market area. You can buy a 50 inch Plasma for $1200 or a 42 inch High Def LCD for less than $2000, albeit generally not from a tier one brand, and it may be that we now finally reached bottom where it comes to end user pricing shrink on these otherwise very volatile items which have tended to serve as an indicator of market price trend. From a reseller point of view of course that may not nescaccarily be an entirely bad thing.In the Eighties and Nineties one the the major exhortations a CE salesperson was able to make to an Australian consumer was "buy it now , before the price goes up". In the New Millenium conversely one the major defferal statements that was heard on CE showroom floors from potential consumers was "I won't buy it yet because it will be cheaper next year."

So perhaps now we might see a better balance of the pricing trend situation of the last few years that has actually led to significant casualties from end user through to manufacturer. The worst examples of course being those consumers who paid $10K plus for a 42 inch Plasma TV that is now got a go price of $999. Or our own Pioneer 50inch didsplay that we proudly put into stock as $35000 item and were eventually able to sell for $6500. Witness also that Fujitsu, Hitachi and now Philips have pulled the plug on their Australian distribution and that Pioneer have been losing money for the last five years and you have a situation wherin perversly the Australian consumer has actually been deprived of products that are avialble elsewhere due to the intense pressure cooker that is our tightly confined highly competitive CE marketplace.

It may well be therefore that there is a silver lining for consumers and distributors in this end game of price reduction in that they can purchase and purvey into an environment where there is some decent retained value in the product. Also in this situation one would expect a proper differentiated hierarchy by quality according to price to evolve that enables consumers to purchase an item with some long term confidence that it's value and pricing won't be rapidly undermined by the combined forces of price de escalation on the other.

Having said all that, one would reccomend that if youve been eying off a pair of really nice speakers or a surround receiver update, this weekend will probably be your last chance at to purchase at current values...