Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
Electronics were among the most requested gifts of
the twenty-eleven Christmas holiday season in the
United States. Jim Barry from the Consumer
Electronics Association says tablet computers were
the most popular electronic gift. Laptop computers
were second. Jim Barry says the iPad continued to
lead the way in the tablet market. Apple released
its iPad 2 in March. The company is expected to
release the iPad 3 in twenty-twelve. "Tablet
computers are the top of the list of what folks said
they were going to buy this year. And probably north
of eighty percent of the tablets being sold up until
now have been Apple iPads." But he says the tablet
market is starting to change. There are now more
choices and less costly tablets available. These
include the new Kindle Fire from Amazon.com. Jim
Barry says e-readers were number three on his
group's survey of holiday gift wishes, and that came
as a surprise to more than a few people. "Some folks
thought that the popularity and success of the
tablet computer would mean sales of e-book readers
would go down. Well, that hasn't happened. Sales of
e-book readers have more than doubled this year.
We're buying lots more. The leaders there continue
to be the Kindle from Amazon and the Nook from
Barnes and Noble, along with the e-reader from
Sony." Amazon released its Kindle Fire just in time
for Christmas. The new Kindle is a touchscreen
tablet. Unlike the earlier e-reader, this one is in
color and lets users explore the Web. The Kindle
Fire sells for one hundred ninety-nine dollars. This
is several hundred dollars less than the iPad, but
about the same as people paid for the Kindle 3G
Wireless in twenty-ten. So the big question on a lot
of people's minds in twenty-eleven was whether or
not to wait for the price to come down. As Jim Barry
put it: "This is the challenge of the early adopter.
You know, one of the great things about consumer
electronics is that the prices get lower as the
stuff gets better. And that's not true of
automobiles or furniture or houses, and so forth. So
as the prices get lower, if you bought earlier you
may feel a little bit of that 'well, I wish I had
waited.'" He says falling prices are one of the
reasons why consumer electronics do relatively well,
even in a difficult economy. For VOA Special
English, I'm Alex Villarreal.Learn English and much
more with our programs, lessons and activities at
voaspecialenglish.com and the VOA Learning English
page on Facebook.
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personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
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is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
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