Soul Eater blindsided conventions across the country last year. One day everybody woke up. wen't to their local con, and realized that 1 out of 15 people was cosplaying as a Soul Eater character.
http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs44/f/2009/ ... u_sama.jpgFunimation tried to capitalize on this, by sending fan-subbers notices to stop subbing Soul Eater. But Funimation didn't actually start releasing Soul Eater merchandise until after the trend had died down a bit. [face-palm moment] Soul Eater is still really popular though.
ummmmm. Best buy and a few other places drastically cut the amount of anime that they sell, so figuring out trends is just a bit harder now. Most people buy their stuff from rightstuf.com, and from what I can see, there is a slow decrease on the amount of stuff that people buy from conventions. Possibly due to the recession (in America) or the fact that most things at cons are cheaper online.
EDIT:
Oh and, thanks to Funimation, English dubs are more popular than they use to be. But some companies like Bandai are struggling to make money off of them. According to Bang-Zoom, Bandai has everything riding on Haruhi. Bandai tried to sumul-dub Kurokami last year, didn't make a dime off of it, and delayed the DVD release like 20 times. So everybody is sticking to just simul-casting........which is still pretty good in my book. Oh and, Dattebayo doesn't do bleach or naruto anymore since they are both being officially simul-cated on crunchyroll. Narutards nearly had a panic attack.