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Consumer 2.0

From around India

Still growing
The peripherals market that includes TFT monitors, flash drives, projectors et al will see an uptick in 2009. According to MAIT, market for keyboards and monitors grew by 14% each over H1 2007-08. With respect to keyboards, the number of units sold between April 07 to September 07was 2,605,425; October 07 to March 08 – 2,973,575; and April 08 to September 08 – 2,962,889.

Qualcomm Ventures keeps faith in mobile
At a time when venture capitalists (VCs) are diversifying into sectors other than technology, Qualcomm Ventures – the venture capital arm of telecommunications major Qualcomm – will continue to invest in firms catering to the mobile and semiconductors ecosystem.

No slowdown in AC & fridge sales
All major players in the durables segment are emphatic that they have managed to buck the trend and are still registering growth, though not as much as expected.

Samsung launches India’s first 8MP Pixon M8800 touch phone
Samsung launches India’s first 8MP Pixon M8800 touch phone. Strengthening its touchscreen portfolio, Samsung has launched India’s first 8 megapixel touchscreen phone, Pixon M8800.

Demand curve: Indicus-Mint Series

The new contours of rural affluence
Rural affluence does not stem solely from agriculture. A large number of households in Kerala benefit from remittances as well as returning migrants. Who are the rural rich? We use a simple definition—households having annual income greater than Rs5 lakh a year, or slightly more than Rs40,000 per month. Gujarat, due to its large cash crop production, Uttar Pradesh because of its large size, Kerala, with its cash crops plus returning migrants, and Punjab and Haryana account for the largest number of rural rich. But if we look at the concentration of the rich, namely, the percentage share of rich households to the total households, we find a different picture. The small states of Goa and Delhi are also included in the Top 5.

Source: Market Skyline of India

Why is rural Gujarat more prosperous than UP, despite the fact that the latter has much better soil and a far better agricultural ecosystem? Gujarat has made rapid advances in rural infrastructure for the last many years, it has a high proportion of land devoted to cash crops, and its farmers have benefited from Bt cotton, a biotech crop. On the other hand, Punjab and Haryana have a stagnating agriculture with tapering or falling productivity increases. Nagaland, at the other end of the country, has taken to cash crops in a big way, cardamom being one of its rapidly growing crops. Being a small state, though, the market size is smaller than in other states, and connectivity still needs significant improvement. Still, this is one state that has been doing particularly well in agriculture in the recent past. The district-level story yields even more interesting insights. Three districts from Kerala make it to the top of the charts. Wayanad, with its commercial crops and plantations of coffee, tea, pepper and rubber, leads in the number of rural rich households and has also become an attractive tourist destination. Midnapore in West Bengal is the only district from the east in the list. A large district with a high population density, Midnapore has seen farm production grow steadily in the last two-and-a-half decades.But rural affluence does not stem solely from agriculture. A large number of households in Kerala benefit from remittances as well as returning migrants. Gurgaon in Haryana has seen rapid increases in land values in its urban area. With prospective developers buying up large tracts of land, many of Gurgaon’s rural inhabitants have entered the ranks of the affluent by selling their land. To some extent, the story is similar for Surat in Gujarat, one of the most rapidly growing cities of the 1990s and 2000s.Rural affluence today is not only about agriculture, though it does have a strong role to play. In a country where the share of agriculture in the economy is falling steadily, it is but natural that many areas would have non-agriculture related stories. Yes, manufacturing, trade and construction are the new drivers of rural affluence.

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Household Incomes generated by top cities of India

Source: City Skyline of India 2008-09

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Insights from Indicus
Consumer Market Trends for India – Incomes and Savings
The results of living it up
Will Inflation strike us back in 2009-10?
Employment during slowdown
UPA score card: Communications I
Continuing Opportunities in the Indian Financial Sector
Consumer Demography and Markets in Top cities of India
Middle and lower middle income segment is driving housing demand

From around the world

US Consumer Sentiment
The headline index edged 3 tenths higher to a still severely low level of 56.6. But expectations, the report's leading component, did rise 2-1/2 points to 53.0 -- indicating that pessimism isn't getting worse and perhaps hinting that pessimism may now be receding.

Digital living room' getting closer
Recent announcements from electronics companies, Hollywood studios, Internet firms and cable networks suggest that dream is becoming a reality.

Homebuilder Confidence in U.S. Was Unchanged in March
Confidence among U.S. homebuilders in March held near a record low, matching forecasts, as the housing slump showed no sign of easing.

Recovery Can't Mean U.S. Resumes Role As Super-Consumer
The danger now, as economic activity slows around the globe, is that the G-20 leaders will seek recovery in a new version of the old, unbalanced system. That is, the nations of Europe and Asia will look to America, with its massive multitrillion-dollar stimulus and rescue programs, to rev up the world's sputtering engine.

Outsized Finance Sector Meant Outsized Consumer Spending?
The bottom line is that the financial sector may not be as big a part of the new economy, employing fewer people and paying them less. And consumer spending may not be as big a share of the economy, either, which would mean fewer stores and fewer people who work in them. If that’s right, the economy could be on the verge of a shift that’s on a scale with the move away from manufacturing in the early 1980s. Such changes are never easy.

HP Adds B-P Battery Tech to Most Consumer Laptops
Boston-Power's agreement with Hewlett-Packard has borne fruit, as the top PC supplier agreed to sell B-P's three-year Sonata lithium-ion batteries in conjunction with 70 percent of its consumer notebook PC line.

Senate Approves Consumer Protection Bill
The first step towards a new consumer protection law has been taken with unanimous senate approval. The new law would force companies to mail out rebates within 90 days of being declared. It would also limit the buyers' time to apply for a rebate to two weeks. We spoke with the Better Business Bureau and they tell us in these tough times, more people are asking for help with rebates.