The average annual UAE household spend on electronic items jumped by more than 62 percent to nearly Dh5,000, ($1,361) according to the findings a latest consumer electronics survey. Smartphones topped the shoppers’ list followed by TVs, Plug Ins revealed in its second nation-wide survey details.
The survey, which was conducted online, gathered responses from 1,986 respondents across 52 nationalities over a period of 25 days (February 26 to March 22). The survey looked at four key CE categories including Smartphones, TV’s, Laptops and Tablets and Cameras.
“At Plug Ins we believe consumer insights are fundamental to the way we retail today and in the future. With the help of the survey we hope to record the pulse of the customer and their purchasing habits and make this data available to the industry,” general manager Sean Connor told reporters at a news conference on Monday.
Talking about general trends, Connor said of the total 1,986 people who participated in the survey, 93.7 percent respondents made a major electronics purchase over the last 12 months with smartphones (66.3 percent) topping their shopping list followed by TV’s (39.2 percent), Tablets (38.4 percent) and Laptops (37.8 percent).
He said that survey results showed that more than 50 percent of pre-purchase research is done online such as company website, social media etc.
The average annual UAE household spend on electronics is approximately Dh4875 per year compared to Dh3,000 ($817) in September 2013 survey. Nearly 50 percent of respondents spend 1-3 hours inside retail stores prior to purchase, he added.
More than 74 percent of the survey participants said they plan to purchase a smartphone in the next six months. While buying smartphone consumers continue to be influenced by brand and price. But in the recent survey Camera resolution has moved up in the ranking vs. 2013 survey.
Samsung (55.2 percent), Apple (39.15) and Blackberry (25.9 percent) continue to be the top smartphones in the UAE. Samsung has improved its share from 37.1 percent in the 2013 survey to 55.2 percent in the February/March edition while Apple grew from 24.5 percent in 2013 to 39.1percent. The surprise gainer is Nokia, which increased its share from 9.6 percent in 2013 to 17.2 percent.
Panel sizes ranging between 30-39-inch leads in terms of current size of TV’s owned with 51 percent of the respondents followed by 35.7 percent with 40-42 inches. More than 43 percent of the survey respondents said their next panel size would be 40-42 inches and a further 33.4 percent said they would buy the 46-50 inches panel size.
When buying a tablet or laptop brand continues to be the biggest influencer followed by device compatibility and screen size.
The primary use for tablet or laptop was browsing (43.2 percent in 2014 vs. 39.8 percent in 2013) but there was a noticeable increase in people using their device for work (27 percent in 2014 vs. 23.85 in 2013).
More people are purchasing DSLR cameras (73.7 percent in 2014 vs. 72.6 percent in 2013) and there is a decline in people buying point-and-shoot (10.5 percent in 2014 vs. 12.2 percent in 2013).
By Abdul Basit
