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"I would bet that things are going to be pretty grim for the fourth quarter," Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst for Parks Associates, told the E-Commerce Times. "If you were going to buy a consumer electronics product, you probably already made that play, in large respect because of tax rebates, or the release of the new iPhone. I just almost wonder if any of the demand that may have been generated for the fourth quarter has all but evaporated, which says to me that a company which doesn't have cash in the bank is going to be struggling."

"I remember four years ago when I was talking to one of the founders of Harmonix," Michael Cai, director of digital media and gaming for Parks Associates, recalled for TechNewsWorld. "I don't think the company's founders themselves envisioned just how popular these games have become. They are already trumping the sports genre on the consoles."

"'Halo 3' skewed last September's results. Taking out the 'Halo' effect, sales would have grown," Michael Cai, a Parks Associates analyst, told the E-Commerce Times Excluding "Halo," "software sales were up 43 percent," noted Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Morgan analyst....

The market to distribute premium video content (mainly TV episodes and feature-length movies) is currently going through one of its most dynamic periods, as experimentation with business models, delivery mechanisms and consumer tastes is in full swing. ...

With the DSi, Nintendo is hoping to convince DS or DS Lite owners to upgrade, and in the meantime, it will keep expanding the market with its cheaper DS, Michael Cai, a Parks Associates analyst, told TechNewsWorld "However I'm not convinced right out of the gate a lot of DS or...

Google showed off its new brainchild last week:a smartphone design in collaboration with its Android partners, Taiwan's handset maker HTC, and the wireless carrier T-Mobile USA. ...

Amy Banse, the president of Comcast Interactive Media, alluded to some of thesechallenges during her keynote at the Parks Associates Connections event in July Comcast is a great example of an incumbent provider working hard at establishing new entertainment avenues for consum...

"Obviously, they're looking at Microsoft as kind of the inspiration for this, and the advantages they've had with the Windows platform," Parks Associates Director of Research John Barrett told TechNewsWorld. "I just don't see that being replicated in the mobile space. Computers are fairly standardized, fairly flexible -- but there's a much greater difference between phone-to-phone than PC-to-PC," he said...

However, facing a challenging holiday season, Microsoft had little wiggle room when it came to price cuts, Michael Cai, a Parks Associates analyst, told the E-Commerce Times "It's an action Microsoft has to make based on recent sales figures. Of course, they have an early to m...

"For the consumer, at the end of the day, what really matters is what can I do with the phone," Parks Associates Director of Research John Barrett told LinuxInsider. "If Android allows you to do things you can't do otherwise and it's better, then consumers will start to say, 'I know what this is, and I want it.' That's going to be hard to get to that point," he predicted...

Buyers of advanced URCs are more likely to have a brand in mind, but the identification with brand remains somewhat weak. As long as brand awareness is relatively weak, reliance upon retail as a source of information will be high. Buyers of URCs cite too much information at retail, which Parks Associates expects to include confusion from inconsistent or contradictory information...

Consumers have embraced digital media, primarily content such as music, photos and video. They generate their own content, transfer their analog data to digital formats, and download media from the Internet. ...

Anything that can make casual photographers feel like they're approaching art with their shots of kids and vacations is helpful, John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates, told TechNewsWorld. "Photography is one of the digital activities that is really pervasive,...

"The really heavy Flickr users are going to be professional photographers or aspiring photographers, people with a fair amount of talent and ability and time to indulge it. In that sense, they are kind of opening up an avenue for their key core users to get more out of the service. I think it's a smart move on their part," John Barrett, research director at Parks Associates, told the E-Commerce Times...

Virtual worlds, despite all the press attention of late, are still in the early stages of development. Virtual worlds came into existence several years before YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, but their adoption rates pale in comparison to these services. Only 7 percent of Internet gamers ages 13 and older visit a virtual world on a weekly basis, compared with 37 percent who visit social networking sites and 41 percent who watch short videos online with the same frequency, according to a recent Parks Associates survey...

"Publics has the clients who want to learn and use the mobile platform for a marketing purpose. So it fits into the theme we have seen that a traditional media-buying company collaborates with new ad technology and network operators to conquer new media platforms. It benefits them both. Last year, [ad firm] WPP had struck a similar technology alliance deal with Google," Harry Wang, a Parks Associates analyst, told the E-Commerce Times...

Contextual targeting is widely used in both the offline and online advertising worlds. However, the wild-card nature of behavioral targeting could revolutionize how marketers interact with their target audience in an online world. ...

Inefficiencies and redundancies resulting from the purchase of different entities brought together under the Platform-A umbrella are presumably part of the problem, said Harry Wang, a Parks Associates analyst "The integration effort -- I don't think they have made a smooth tra...

As installed home theaters and multiroom audio systems become more affordable, a broader market of consumers at lower income/wealth levels will open up. This trend is evident as we look over results from numerous Parks Associates' consumer surveys. Ownership of all forms of entertainment systems is extensive, and intentions to purchase larger (40+ inches) flat-panel TVs and multiroom audio systems are high. Parks Associates' Digital Media Habits II (3Q/'07) study revealed that more than 20 percent of broadband households in the U.S. planned to purchase a flat-screen TV within 12 months, and 66 percent intend to buy one 40 inches diagonal or larger. With this research in mind, we see a natural evolution in the high-end A/V market as systems become more affordable and accessible to a larger base of customers...

A streaming business could make good sense for Amazon, Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst with Parks Associates, told the E-Commerce Times "We've been trying to find some pulse in the movie rental business, and what seems to be working -- what we think is going ...