The COVID-19 crisis “intensifies and accelerates” shift in the consumer electronics market in Germany, according to a study published by German digital association Bitkom on Thursday.
Sales of common consumer electronics such as televisions, digital cameras or game consoles were expected to fall by 7 percent to 8.2 billion euros (9.7 billion U.S. dollars) in 2020, the study indicated.
“The market for conventional consumer electronics has been shrinking for several years” in Germany, said Bitkom President Achim Berg. The decline continued “unabated” during the COVID-19 crisis.
In contrast, demand for new technologies such as smartwatches was “growing massively,” Bitkom noted. Twenty-eight percent of smartwatch owners in Germany measured their health data during the COVID-19 crisis.
The study found “growth potential” for networked devices such as household and gardening robots. According to Bitkom, almost one in five Germans already had a robot assistant for tasks such as vacuuming, window cleaning or lawn mowing.
At the same time, 45 percent of Germans could imagine using a robot in the household, the study found.
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