Demand for Digital Skyrockets

WASHINGTON, December 22, 2007 - Factory sales of MP3 players will rise from $424 million in 2003 to nearly $6 billion in 2007, according to projected sales. Additionally, sales of digital television sets and monitors for the same period are estimated to increase from $8.7 billion to $26.3 billion.

The transition in consumer electronics from analog to digital format is just one of the many changes taking place in American life that can be tracked in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2008. Published since 1878, it is the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on everything from the number of public school teachers to hotel accommodations, from online shipping to marital status.

Products are not the only things going digital; the process for acquiring them is as well. Of the $3.7 trillion in retail sales in 2005, $93 billion (2.5 percent) were recorded as e-commerce sales (Table 1019).

In 2005, electronic shopping and mail-order houses accounted for 70 percent ($65 billion) of e-commerce sales, most notably from computer hardware (14 percent), clothing (12 percent), and drugs and beauty aids (10 percent). Motor vehicle and parts dealers made up another 18 percent of e-commerce sales (Table 1019 and 1020).

Between 2004 and 2005, Internet publishing and broadcasting operating revenue increased by 19 percent. Revenue from online advertising space increased by 29 percent (Table 1116). Meanwhile, the number of daily newspapers continued to decline, from 1,611 in 1990 to 1,437 in 2006. Circulation fell from 62.3 million subscribers to 52.3 million (Table 1102).

The 127th Statistical Abstract has 64 new tables. Although emphasis in this compendium is primarily given to national data, many tables present data for regions and individual states, and a smaller number for metropolitan areas and cities.

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