Dropping: Best Buy reports dropping TV sales

The (sorta) bad news continues for LCD and HDTV TV sales, as Best Buy reported a double-digit drop in HDTV sales over the holiday season, as people held off on buying TVs in a very big way, and as we predicted, lower shipments = lower sales. More to read:

Best Buy’s stock took a 14.8 percent beating today on news that it earned $217 million in the third quarter — a 4.4 percent decline year over year — and felt compelled to revise its fourth quarter forecast downwards. The reason? Seems folks are holding off on buying televisions in a big way: the company suffered a “low-double digit’ decline in boob tube sales, even worse than an industry average in the single digits, which would suggest that 2010′s 3D revolution hasn’t attracted the kind of consumer attention manufacturers (and content providers) would’ve liked.

We’re pretty sure it’ll rebound, but right now the market is experiencing a “correction” of a sort, and we’ll ride it out.