ADDISON, Texas—Smart TVs have firmly established their place in the American household, as Parks Associates shares that 54% of U.S. broadband homes own at least one smart TV.
This was one of the findings from a new Parks Associates white paper developed in cooperation with Applicaster. “Optimizing the Smart TV Experience” details how smart TVs have become the primary platform for video services, the role of technology and what impact the COVID-19 has had.
According to Steve Nason, research director at Parks Associates, smart TVs have steadily improved their ease of navigation and discovery of content features, helping them to supplant other video devices as the main source of video content.
“Enhancements such as an improved UX come at an important market inflection point, where consumers are watching more video at home while also cutting the cord on pay-TV, leaving them to search for content on their own, across multiple services,” said Nason.
From Q1 2019 to Q1 2020, more than 6 million U.S. broadband households have cut the cord on traditional pay-TV services, according to Parks Associates, primarily transitioning to OTT services or broadcast TV via antennas. Smart TVs are also gaining inroads for online video as well, with one-third of homes citing a smart TV as their primary streaming video device, the only measured device seeing a year-over-year increase, said Nason.
The COVID-19 pandemic has seen increased viewership for the TV as people have been quarantining since mid-March. Parks says that households are consuming more than 20 hours of video content on average weekly via the TV, 40% more than in 2017.
For more information, visit www.parksassociates.com.
