More news this week that positions smart TVs as essential players in the over-the-top and multiscreen marketplace, as TDG released its report—The In-Home CE and Home Network Ecosystem – 2013—contending that one-quarter of U.S. households now own at least one smart TVs, up from just half of that in 2011.
That news shouldn’t be too surprising, as the number of smart TVs shipped globally has been rising steadily. CE manufacturers report shipments globally increased from 52 million sets in 2011, to 66 million last year, and some analysts say that number should exceed 140 million by 2015, reaching about about 55 percent of the market. IHS Screen Digest in February pointed out that “consumers are now increasingly buying big-screen TVs that include the Internet capabilities,†even if they’re not looking for them.
Whether those TVs are actually connecting to the Internet remains the big question. Conventional wisdom says most users buy the sets for the HD capabilities, connect them to a pay-TV provider’s STBs and ignore the Internet connection.
But the research from TDG, based on interviews with 2,000 broadband users between 18 and 75 years old, says that’s changing. TDG writes that more than 69 percent of smart TVs in the U.S. are now connected to the Internet.
Even if that’s the case, there’s the nugget: While a quarter of U.S. households own a smart TV, less than three-quarters of them are connected. Only 17 percent of U.S. households accesses the Internet using their connected TVs. By contrast, connected set-top boxes, like the Roku and Apple TV devices, currently are in about 14 percent of U.S. households, up from 12 percent in 2011. It’s probably safe to say that virtually all of them are connected.
So, which will win? Which device finds its way into the heart of the American home, reigns supreme in the living room?
For years, streaming devices have been the purview of early adopters. That’s changing as users continue to discover online video, as they continue to turn to services like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon for their entertainment.That’s going to increase the allure of streaming boxes, and, as it does, the availability of content will increase as well. It’s a mutually inclusive cycle. With a price tag of less that $100 each, the decision to buy an Apple TV or Roku doesn’t necessitate a family sit down; it can be an impulse buy, an “I want it now so I can watch House of Cards,†kind of thing. It will allow broader adoption on the cheap, and it will be rapid.
During CES, I moderated a panel, Where Connected CE Meets OTT, which included Eric Anderson, VP, TV Content Strategy, North America, Samsung. I made a statement that I believed the uptake of smart TVs would lag behind devices like the Apple TV and Roku, because of the cost, and because it wasn’t possible to upgrade TVs as new tech came on the market. Eric said Samsung had that licked, offering a smart TV with an upgradable—and reasonably inexpensive—module that could be swapped out, like a hard drive.
That’s the eventual game changer for smart TVs, the technology that could make a Roku or Apple TV device redundant, and something that accelerates consumers’ willing adoption of smart TVs. At the moment, it’s not universal, or cheap enough, to have an immediate impact. But, when it becomes ubiquitous across all brands, watch out.
