CEA sees growth in the U.S. market as well, but there's great demand for mobile phones and other electronic devices in developing countries, where farmers and exporters are using text-messaging to conduct business, Chandler said. "Where there are people, there's opportunity" for the consumer electronics industry, she said.

The CEA's report comes out just before the group's International Consumer Electronics Show opens in Las Vegas and 15 days before U.S. President-elect Barack Obama takes office. Free trade has been a major push for CEA during the past year, even as U.S. voters elected several politicians who are wary of free trade deals.

Obama, as well as some of his fellow Democrats in the U.S. Congress, have questioned recent free trade agreements, saying some pacts have not protected jobs in the U.S. and other nations and have not included enough environmental protections. During the past two years, the Democratic-controlled Congress failed to act on three proposed free-trade agreements, with agreements with Columbia, Panama and South Korea failing to be approved.

Obama has called for new programs to help workers whose jobs have moved overseas, and he's questioned the labor and environmental protections in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1993.

"For far too long ... the attitude has been that any trade agreement is a good trade agreement," Obama said during a presidential debate in October. "And NAFTA did not have enforceable labor agreements and environmental agreements."