There's more on High Street trading conditions as Amstrad joins the chorus of people blaming a sluggish market for the failure of the video phone to take off. Yesterday John Lewis made similar noises about trade at the moment.
I'm not convinced, personally. Yesterday this blog also carried a story about e-tailers taking market share away from Dixons, and Woolworths moving into Cybershopping.
It could well be that the money from the High Street is moving into the e-economy as was predicted prematurely during the dotcom boom. Names like Amstrad, Dixons and John Lewis start to sound very 'old economy' when you look at it like that.
It could also be that the video phone was only ever going to appeal to a minority. The real tech-heads will have their webcams and video conferencing anyway, and the non-tecchies won't see any benefit to a face to face phone call. The High Street is undoubtedly suffering, but my instinct is that the underlying causes aren't exclusively economic.
