IT retailers rub hands at projected Christmas sales figures

While 2012 has been a miserable year for IT sales, many will be cheered to know that the analysts are expecting consumers to stump up £22 Billion during the Christmas sales period.

New research from MoneySupermarket predicts that with more than 30 shopping days until Christmas Brits will spend more than £445 per person this year.

This is up 1.8 percent on last year’s figure of £437 per person, representing an extra £1 billion in overall spend.

The survey is based on a survey of more than 2,000 British adults. Those spending the most will be 35-54 year olds at £491 per person. The total falls to £423 for those aged 55 and over and £415 for those aged 18 to 34.

Those in the North East are set to spend the most with an average of £595 per person, followed by those in Wales at £531. Shoppers in the East Midlands are expecting to spend the least averaging at £355 each.

The figures show that they do not seem to care much about getting into debt either. One in five claim that this Christmas will hit their credit cards quite hard.

But there was some bad news buried in the statistics which indicated that the IT market might not get much of an expected boost.

While statistics from the US indicate that children there are leaning on their parents to buy them tablets and smartphones, in the UK the maximum amount parents would ever consider spending on an individual present for their child, £131 came out as the purchase tipping point. This will put a lot of the latest IT toys out of the reach of many parents’ budgets.