Research: 80%+ Smart TVs Internet-connected
December 6, 2018
Findings from analyst firm Parks Associates reveal that consumers are steadily adding connected entertainment devices to their households and using their smart features—83 per cent of Smart TV owners connect their device to the Internet, up from 70 per cent in 2014. Ownership of streaming media players has almost doubled from about 21 per cent of US broadband households in 2014 to almost 40 per cent in 2018, while Smart TV ownership has increased from 34 per cent to 53 per cent during the same time period.
“More connected devices open more opportunities for streaming and OTT services in the home, prompting more service announcements such as AT&T’s plans to offer a tiered video streaming service,” said Elizabeth Parks, SVP, Parks Associates, in advance of the company’s Future of Video conference, which will examine consumer demand and expectations for these services as major content and service providers prepare to launch services in 2019.
“The rise of direct-to-consumer offerings and the blurring of lines between pay-TV and OTT are leading to increased fragmentation in the viewing experience, where consumers are having to face complex self-curating systems,” said conference speaker Anthony Smith-Chaigneau, Sr. Director Product Marketing, NAGRA. “To address this, service providers must become ‘smartly digital’ – by embracing cloudification, actively claiming the aggregation role, and leveraging data-driven principles to define and evolve their consumer propositions.”