Despite declining sales of videogame consoles, they are...
Despite declining sales of videogame consoles, they are the devices being used most often to connect TVs to the Internet, a DisplaySearch study said. Twenty-seven percent of flat-panel TVs are connected to the Internet in U.S., Japan, China, France, Germany,…
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Italy and U.K. households, either directly via smart TVs or through other connected devices, it said. Game consoles were used by 19.3 percent of those households to connect to the Internet, followed by Roku, Apple TV and other media center boxes, at 17.1 percent, said NPD DisplaySearch. Blu-ray and DVD players trailed at 16.3 percent, followed by cable and satellite set-top boxes (10.7 percent), notebook PCs (10.3 percent), smart TVs (10.2 percent), desktop PCs (9 percent), connected TVs (6.3 percent) and other devices (1 percent). But “behavior varies by country,” said the research company. In China, for example, connected flat-panel-TV households most often connect via media center boxes (23 percent), it said. In the U.K., however, the preferred connection is via game consoles, at 20 percent, it said. “Despite an increase in the availability of TVs with internal connectivity options, consumers still primarily access online content using game consoles, media center boxes, and other devices connected to their existing TVs,” said Research Director Riddhi Patel. “As consumers become more comfortable using the connectivity features of smart TVs, and as the navigation and search capabilities on those devices become more intuitive and user friendly, we can expect to see more consumers accessing the Internet directly from smart TVs,” Patel predicted. The data were based on online consumer surveys conducted in each of the seven countries, the research company said. It polled 1,000 respondents in each of the countries in the first week of February.