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This past week, technology and entertainment news has been largely dominated by Amazon, as they launched six new Echo devices and revealed insight into the final stages of their strategy to move further into movie production and distribution.
You’ve likely heard of cord cutting, the trend toward cancelling cable TV in lieu of streaming video or no paid TV service at all. This trend, which is becoming more mainstream, is no longer just a behavior of innovators who test the waters of new technology. In fact, it’s so pervasive that media companies such as Disney, CBS, and HBO, have or are in the process of decoupling their programming from the traditional pay-TV distribution machine, now offering streaming services that don’t require you to buy a large bundle of channels, but rather subscribe to the core content they offer.
The initial fanfare of last week’s Apple announcements has subsided and the debate has moved from what will be announced to which device consumers will purchase. What we have seen so far from data collected by market intelligence company, CivicScience1, is that consumers are fairly divided.
While the smartwatch is still not a mass-market device, with roughly 9.5 percent penetration among U.S. adults as of the middle of 2017, Apple has certainly been doing its part to push the category in that direction. Apple currently owns more than 50 percent of the U.S. smartwatch market and the newly announced Apple Watch Series 3 will further bolster Apple’s status as the top smartwatch maker in the industry.
This year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) Americas is, in many ways, a story of edges. Smartphone manufacturers are clearly demonstrating that phones should have less edge, while the networks that enable these devices will require a far greater edge presence to succeed in the future.
Tomorrow, Apple is expected to launch its next generation iPhone. Assuming the anticipated announcement becomes a reality, this will mark 10 years since Apple entered the smartphone market and fundamentally changed not only what we expect from a phone, but also the competitive landscape for mobile phones – and smartphones in particular. Theoretically, this next iPhone should be an incremental enhancement, following Apple’s pattern of launching the “S” version every other year; but, Apple cannot (and will not) simply launch a minor hardware update for the 10th anniversary. Apple is working to stay at the leading edge of the market as competition looks to build faster and more aesthetically pleasing alternatives to the iPhone behemoth.
With the introduction of new devices, new features, and updates to hardware and operating systems alike, 2017 has brought a number of changes to the smartwatch market. As of June 2017, nearly nine percent of U.S. consumers aged 18+ owned a smartwatch, up almost 1.5 percentage points from the six months prior. Additionally, according to latest WEAR Report Industry Overview and Forecast from NPD’s Connected Intelligence, growth in the category will continue
Port Washington, NY, June 28, 2017 – By the end of 2020 there are forecast to be 260 million installed devices attached to the internet and able to deliver apps to TVs, according to the latest NPD Connected Intelligence forecast. This represents 31 percent growth in TV-connected devices over the forecast period, led by smart TVs and streaming media players. In fact, smart TVs will drive nearly half (48 percent) of installed internet-connected TV device growth through 2020, while streaming media players will contribute 31 percent of ownership growth.
The unlocked mobile phone market has reached approximately 30 million consumers in the U.S, which currently accounts for 12.5 percent of the market, according to global information company, The NPD Group. As the unlocked phone market continues to grow, the latest Unlocked Phone Demand Report 2.0 from NPD Connected Intelligence compares consumers who purchased unlocked phones, to the larger base of consumers who purchased standard, locked phones from their carriers. Among the findings, the report revealed that consumers with unlocked phones are less loyal to both carriers and device brands than those with locked phones.
The lady sitting in front of me on the tram was clearly into her music. She was using headphones, but it didn’t really make much of a difference. The tram driver came back with the request for her to turn her iPhone volume down, which she did. In the relative quiet that followed, I realized that there were two tech issues addressed by that single moment. Firstly, in a future (or in some places, current) world where there is no tram driver anymore, we would have continued to listen to the tinny echoes of Eric passing through the headphones; and secondly, tech smarts can (at least for now) be ignored at will by the consumer.