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Connected television adoption rates not keeping up with technology cycle

Connected television adoption rates not keeping up with technology cycle

TelevisionsSTL Partners has released research suggesting that the adoption rates for standalone connected televisions will be slower than the technology cycles for devices in the UK market.

The analyst firm claims that there are around 60 million television sets in the UK and assumes that all of the 9.5 million TVs sold in 2010 were replacements rather than an increase in sets per household.  As such it claims a replacement cycle of every six years at a minimum, which is much slower than the technology cycles for these devices.

“While we expect internet connectivity to become a pretty standard feature with TV over the next couple of years we are sceptical about their active use for viewing video. The content offering is currently too limited. We would be surprised if within a couple of years, there are more than one million homes regularly using TVs to watch video over the internet,” the analysis said.

In addtion the research suggests the following per platform:

  • Looking at set top box-enabled connected TV, over the next two to three years it forecasts healthy growth for both BSkyB and Virgin Media in the sector with their respective offerings:
    • Sky Anytime+ -: over 4 million homes with their main TV connected to the internet.
    • Virgin Media’s TiVo-based : over two million homes, assuming effective promotion.
  • However the research struggles to see an installed base of over a million YouView homes, despite BT and TalkTalk being able to market to a large base of broadband connected clients.
  • Gaming consoles are expected to become the most important method for secondary TV sets to connect to the internet, especially in children’s bedrooms. Around three quarters of gaming consoles are expected to become connected to the internet, which equates to around 10 million homes.  However the vast majority of the activity on these devices will be based around internet gaming, with as little as 20% expected to be for regular video viewing.

Read the full article on Rapid News

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