Electronics sales plummet in Norway

Google Assistant is finally available in Norwegian - albeit for a few select users only. (Photo: Stein Jarle Olsen, Tek.no)

Electronics sales take a hit in Norway

We buy fewer but more expensive electrical appliances. The latter is not enough to compensate for the first, and in the first half of the year, electronics sales plummeted by 5.7 per cent.

 

Norwegians choose more expensive phones and TVs but do not buy as many of them as before. We also use a lot of money on headphones. The sale of heaters and fans increased during a where a cold winter was followed by a hot summer. At the same time, DAB sales are declining, and there is less spent on home appliances, according to sales figures from the electronics chains.

Those who sell small and large gadgets experience a decline of 5.7 per cent compared to the first six months of last year. Even so, the Director of the trade organization, Jan Røsholm, is positive.

Fans and air condition

– Electronics sales in the first half of last year were exceptionally good, a total of 14 per cent higher than in 2016. Now we see that the sales have stabilized, Røsholm states in a press release. He does not doubt what has been the sales winner in recent months: cooling solutions. The sales of table fans and movable air conditioning units are four times larger than a year ago.

Newcomers to this year’s statistics are ”smart” speakers and digital assistants. Although these do not understand nor speak Norwegian and that several are sold with foreign socket plugs, have120,000 Norwegians bought “smart” speakers lately. Google Assistant has been awaited by Norwegians since before the summer but is now available in the marketplace, according to Tek.no.  A Swedish version of the virtual assistant was launched last week.

Several readers report that they have gained access to Norwegian-language Assistant, and Tek.no journalist Vegar Jansen discovered on Monday morning that the assistant had changed language from Swedish.

It must be mentioned that the Assistant requires Android 6 or later – and one-third of active Android users are still on older versions, according to statistics from Google’s own app store.

 

© NTB scanpix / #Norway Today