According to industry organisation Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) people are going to keep shelling out for newfangled electronics wizardry, despite inflation, high gas prices, and mortgages defaulting. The CEA predicts makers will incur revenues of $173 billion in the US this year, which would be a growth of 7% compared with last year. Revenues have been divined to be $183 billion in 2009. Should the numbers turn out to be precise, then we all know who borrowed Dr. John Dee's scrying stone back four years ago and returned it later on.

The CEA had previously cast bones and runes back in January and predicted sales of $171 billion for the US consumer electronics market. Displays are fuelling the market, sales are getting close $28 billion, or 16% of all shipped consumer electronics (CE).

Flatscreen tellys are supposed to rise more, as the US will switch to digital TV on February 17 next year. Flatscreen sales are going to rise 24%, whilst prices will decrease by 11% - that won't make Samsung, LG Display nor Au Optronics happy. As a matter of fact, Taiwanese panel maker Chi Mei Optroeletronics has started turning the thumbscrews on its production, whilst Samsung is considering making less to clear out its overstocked warehouses, as we mentioned here. Nonetheless, the CEA foresees that 60% of US households will have a digital telly by the end of this year.

Video games revenues are going to top $21 billion this year, growing 27% this year and another 23% in 2009. Smartphone revenue will climb 51% because consumers want phones that can also be hooked up to a beamer and show their powerpoint presentations and feature a Divx player. The full forecast can by obtained for a mere $2,000 from the CEA, or for nothing at all if one happens to be a member company.

“In a tough economy, consumers turn to CE products for many reasons – from entertaining in the home to telecommuting to save gas. Such factors – and access to global consumers through free trade – help the CE industry to flourish while growth rates of other industries have either stalled or declined. Consumers don’t want to live without CE products and continue to crave the latest gadgets and innovations our industry has to offer,” rhapsodised CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro.

We'd love to include fancy charts and pictures in this article, but the CEA has unfortunately not updated its press kits since the middle of last year.

Maybe they need some more CE in their A. X