Advanced Television

Research: 76% US homes have smart TV

April 8, 2022

Hub Entertainment Research’s fourth annual Connected Home study shows compound growth for smart TVs: more US homes own them, and more owners are using their built-in capabilities to stream shows. Other smart tech – smart speakers or smart home devices – are in a substantial number of American homes, but still lag behind adoption of smart TVs.

Smart TV ownership continues to climb: Three quarters (76 per cent) of TV households say they own a smart TV, up from 70 per cent a year ago. And the majority (57 per cent) of all TV sets are now smart sets, a proportion a quarter higher than in 2020 (45 per cent).

So too is use of smart TV capabilities: In the past, many smart TVs were operated as ‘dumb’ sets – owners plugged them into cable boxes or external streaming devices, bypassing their built-in smart capabilities. But that is changing too.

In 2022, more than four in five (86 per cent) smart TV homes regularly stream shows through a smart TV’s built-in capability. That’s a significant increase over 2020 (75 per cent). But it still shows that a notable share (14 per cent, or one in seven) of smart TV homes aren’t yet using those sets to stream TV or movies.

Smart TVs are the leading edge of smarter homes overall: About half of all households now own other smart devices:

  • 52 per cent of all homes own a smart speaker (Amazon Echo, Google Nest, etc.)
  • 48 per cent own at least one smart home device such as a smart thermostat, smart doorbell, smart lightbulb, etc.)

“Growth in smart TV viewing over the past few years has been supercharged not just by more smart TVs, but greatly increased use of smart TV apps for streaming,” said David Tice, senior consultant to Hub and co-author of the study. “It has been a long road to get a large majority of smart TV owners to use those sets for streaming. This is a theme for smart tech overall: it’s not just getting devices into homes, but how can stakeholders get consumers to use the full capabilities of smart devices?”

 

Categories: Articles, Connected TV, Consumer Behaviour, Equipment, Markets, OTT, Research

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