That figure is the average spending per user, post-Black friday. The main winners were Best Buy—with a 18.3% year-over-year growth—and Fry's—with a 12.2%. No only that but, spending in the high end retail has also increased, reverting a negative trend.

Great. Now all those people without a single penny in the bank will be able to be rejoice. [Mint]

The quote, from Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore, is a sort of sad double entendre: The question is set up as a broad query about the state of the consumer electronics industry, but Stringer's answer sounds more like an off-record confession about his own company than a cool assessment of its industry. From Sony's point of view, the CE industry hasn't started to turn around; from Sony's point of view, Sony hasn't started to turn around: whichever was meant, these aren't the most reassuring words to hear from head honcho of one of the largest electronics companies in the world.

Anyway, cheer up Howard! People will buy your consoles, to play games, to sim-kill civilian hostages, for Christmas! It's how things are. [Reuters via Digital Daily—Apologies for the PS3 Spidey font. It had to be done.]

Q3 financials are in, and they show nothing but pain:

Smartphone maker HTC Corp reported Tuesday an 18% drop in third-quarter net profit... The company, the world's largest maker of phones using Microsoft Corp.'s operating system by shipments, said its net profit for the three months ended Sept. 30 fell to NT$5.76 billion (US$179.0 million) from NT$6.99 billion a year earlier.

This is worse than predicted. So OK, let's think: What could it be? Look closely:

The company, the world's largest maker of phones using Microsoft Corp.'s operating system by shipments

Ah, right, this. As much publicity as HTC's Android phones get from the tech press, they're still a Windows Mobile company at their core, a fact which is becoming more ballast than fuel. That, combined with all the money they're spending on changing that, i.e. marketing their Android push, makes being HTC right now a pricey proposition. Pull through, guys! Then you can put Android on the Touch HD2 and we can all go home happy. If that's not your plan, somehow, then kindly sulk off and die. [WSJ]

Things, with dollars! It's a story, in two parts: enjoy.

From March, here:

[M]anufacturers are being faced with two equally unattractive (read: expensive) options for building TV-sized OLED TVs, like the one Samsung showed off last year: either devise an entirely new manufacturing process, which would require the invention of new techniques and machines for fabrication, or pursue a different type of OLED panel. Both options would circumvent the current size restrictions, but both options are extremely expensive.

The investments necessary to manufacters a legitimately "next-gen," i.e. either reasonably priced or reasonably sized, OLED, are extremely high, and difficult to muster capital for in this economy. This alone could've explained Sony's delay, but then we have this, today, from the WSJ:

Sony will delay the launch of its next organic light emitting diode, or OLED, television because mass producing the new displays would exacerbate losses at its TV division, according to people familiar with the matter.

It's not just that developing the fabrication processes to build larger OLED TVs is too expensive—it's that so far, and probably for some time into the future, OLED TVs are and will be money-losing prestige products. And right now, Sony can't afford prestige products.

The WSJ points to Samsung and LG as the companies to fill the OLED void, but neither company has been overly enthusiastic about the technology, at least on a TV scale, for the last few months. Idealistic vision of the future, circa 2007? Deeeeee—layed. [WSJ]

(Click on the image to see it bigger.)

I have no idea whether or not all of the stats are true, but I believe the shit out of them. Peach versus baby blue is the new good versus evil. Apply haphazard census information to a bathroom guy graphic and it's un-freggin-questionable. That's the bathroom guy, after all. He's never abused my trust by leading me into a women's restroom only to laugh and laugh while recording the event for a little YouTube subscriber bait.

That's restraint.

Having flown both types of carriers, I'd have never known that a company like Air France has 10x the staff of a company like EasyJet. And I don't know the last time I was served a meal on a non-international flight, no matter how large or expensive the carrier or ticket. [Flickr via Digg]

"This," in case your index finger is tired, is an announcement from the company that they expect their 2009 earnings report to show a decline in revenue, despite expectation for a 10% increase. It might sound surprising, but it's matter a perspective. To a lot of us, HTC bears the scent of a lean up and comer. That's not at all what they are, which is why this all makes sense:

HTC is the world's largest maker of phones using Microsoft Corp.'s operating system, in terms of shipments... "The outlook has softened for the second half of the year, with June being the turning point for HTC as it faced a lot of competition from Apple," said Yuanta Securities analyst Vincent Chen.

The company's trying to play this off as a matter of product delays "lower than expected" contract orders and the like, and analysts are pointing to other companies entering the fledgling Android space, but internationally, HTC lives and dies by Window Mobile. It's not the greatest position to be in, and one they're trying to move from, but as far as 2009 goes, that's their story. [WSJ]

What does this mean? Most likely, it means we were right: the desktop PC is sputtering out. Not all the decrease can be attributed to the weak economy, seeing as notebook PC shipments raised by 11.7%. Pretty soon we're going to see desktops become a niche market, reserved only for pros, dental assistants and gamers. [iSuppli]

That's the situation now in Japan, where industrial production has sunk by 40%, leaving scores of mechanized workers with nothing to do. So, they sit.

It gets worse (for robots): industrial robot sales fell by around 60% in the first quarter of the year, which will have unfortunately effects for people outside of the manufacturing world. Why? Who do you think pays for all those ridiculous robot vanity projects we always write about? Yup, it's the same guys who can't move any Catalytic Converters Assemblybot 3000s. Basically, not only will robots continue to lose their jobs—as a genus, if we can call them that, they'll actually start to get less cool.

In a broader context, this is also kind of disturbing. A large, newly-unemployed population with few prospects and a precarious political climate is the classic recipe for the rise of totalitarianism. A large, newly-unemployed robot population with few prospects and a precarious political climate? I don't like the sound of that one bit. [NYT]

Only—you guesed it—Windows Mobile device users will have their data plans reimbursed. It may sound fishy at first (Bill Gates banning iPods in his house, anyone?), but you have to remember that many companies offer no such perk for their employees to begin with. The economy being what it is, such a cut in employee benefits wouldn't be out of line for any tech company. [Business Insider]

At the top of the seat there is a movable winged head-and neck-rest cushion; and when you recline your seat-back panel, the seat-base sitting area moves forward by a couple of inches.

This type of mechanism is frequently used for seats at theatres, cinemas and sports stadiums because it provides an added amount of personal comfort without encroaching on the space of the people in the row behind you.

The Qantas long-haul economy-class experience is further enhanced by the addition of footrest nets placed under the seats of the row in front of you.

When stretching out, passengers can get their feet off the floor and supported in a comfortably flexible cradle. This ingenious innovation is much simpler to use than the traditional front-or rear-projecting foot bars — the nets stop passengers from sliding forward when they are sleeping [...] the footrest net is an excellent accessory because it is virtually weightless.

That's how Jennifer Coutts Clay—author of Jetliner Cabins—describes the economy class seat in Qantas' long-distance flights, which just got an Australian design price. It sounds marginally better than the torture chairs that we are used to. Not that much better, but better.

Nevertheless, it's amazing that the majority of passengers still get treated like cattle, while just a few decades ago flying was a much more comfortable experience. Our comfort keeps getting down along with the price of tickets. And while I appreciate prices going down, did anyone ask me about making the wonderful experience of flying a pain in the ass?

I would gladly pay a little more to get a bit more of comfort. Not business-class super-seats or first class full beds. Just a decent, smarter seat like the one described above, with enough space around it. Just a few more inches will do wonders, really. You know, a seat where I don't have to get my personal space constantly violated by some man with body odor problems drooling over my shoulder while he's sleeping. [Jetliner Cabins via Runway Girl]

In case you're wondering, that means paying workers on commission, keeping employees for a long time, and making sure they actually know what they're talking about. Naturally, Best Buy, via a spokesperson, was defensive about these claims:

Our employees are exceptional at demystifying complex technology!

while Walmart's PR strategy was hilariously honest:

With electronics data so readily available online today, many customers come to us looking for a particular brand or item, knowledge in hand, and may not want or feel comfortable shopping with a salesperson.

Neeeeeerds!That said, commission-driven aggression doesn't necessarily equate to better service, and I suspect the WSJ's conclusion has less to do with the chains' superior customer experience than it does the public's inordinately toxic impressions of big box retailers like Best Buy. But the sentiment certainly rings true: even as a gadget blogger, I feel better buying my gear from someone who can answer basic questions about it. [WSJ--Image courtesy of the WSJ]

The machine hack is actually an art project designed and created by Ellie Harrison as part of her residency at the Plymouth College of Art. The little monitor you see at the right is actually tracking the BBC's RSS feed, and whenever the aforementioned doom and gloom comes over the wire, someone's getting something sugary.

The innards were programmed by Ben Dembroski using PureData and Python, while project2891 was implemented alongside i-DAT to activate messaging on the GreenScreen. In other words, free candy! And, this thing must get refilled, a lot. [Ellie Harrison via Make via noquedanblogs- Thanks, Sabino]

CNET reports, via an SEC filing, that Apple has cut back their full-time retail workforce by a full 1600 employees—from 15600 to 14000—in the last quarter alone, during which they only opened one new retail outlet.

The press narrative so far this year has been that Apple has bucked the recession, outperforming the industry and minimizing an inevitable sales slowdown after an impressive Q1. And this narrative holds: Apple has done well on paper while its competitors haven't. It's just, now we sort of know how. [CNET] [Note: Some have suggested that some employees have scaled back their hours and been subtracted from the "full-time" figure. This is plausible, but either way it's a pretty rough cutback.]

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy back in February, but these 300 liquidations are the first serious manifestation of its decline. This is terrible news all around, but could have been predicted; film developing is a dead business, and the increasingly homogeneous nature of point-and-shoot cameras and the spec-centric marketing of DSLRs favors impersonal, cheap and convenient retailers like Best Buy and Walmart

And that's not to mention online retailers, bolstered by the magisterial advice of sites like DPReview—a sort of digital equivalent to the archetypal old Grizzled Local Camera Store Vet. That said, for the average consumer this is a loss—good luck asking the kid at your local Target which of their cameras has the best high-ISO noise reduction. [MarketWatch]

Reuters slapped a scary headline on this story, but it couldn't really be described as sensational. As much a terrifying portent of electronics companies' coming year as it is an indicator of the company's especially sorry state, this announcement is particularly gruesome when you consider that, unlike Palm, they don't even have an escape plan in place, or even a substantive smartphone line—one of the few areas that is expected to grow over the coming months. [Reuters]

In fact, the DisplaySearch report goes one step beyond simply stating a year, and says that OLED technology will be the "fastest growing material application in electronics over the next eight years." But, like I said, we'll have to wait until 2011 to see any kind of surge in production.

And as a reward for our patience, OLED will explode onto the scene (every scene, apparently), with applications not only in the TV market, but military, cell phone, flexible displays, and other areas where sharp, thin and gorgeous displays are needed. Like my house. [Wired]

Ars interviewed Barry Young, Managing Director of the OLED Association, and managed to get a pretty good read on where the OLED industry is, and more importantly, where it's headed. The nebulous long term projections about OLED dominance still stand, but the short term prospects are, in a word, shitty. Here's why:

Some major manufacturers have gotten to be pretty good at building the small OLED TVs we're used to seeing. Samsung is about to introduce a 14.1-inch pipsqueak to go against Sony's 11-inch wonder midget, and prices for these mini-sets should start dropping soon enough. Unfortunately, these small OLED screens are the largest functional television displays anyone is capable of mass-producing right now.

Sparing you the mind-numbing technical details (those here), manufacturers are being faced with two equally unattractive (read: expensive) options for building TV-sized OLED TVs, like the one Samsung showed off last year: either devise an entirely new manufacturing process, which would require the invention of new techniques and machines for fabrication, or pursue a different type of OLED panel. Both options would circumvent the current size restrictions, but both options are extremely expensive.

In the current climate, companies like Samsung can't be certain that such risky investments will pay off fast enough, and for the time being, investment capital is scarce. Answering a question about Samsung's plan for a 32" OLED set, Young could only say this: "How soon Samsung will do their next generation will be affected by the downturn." In other words, sorry 2009. And 2010. [Ars via OLED-Display]