We’ve had a nice backwards and forwards discussion about tablet viewing over the past few weeks with David Mercer, who heads up the think tank at Strategy Analytics for the Digital Consumer Practice. He initially took issue with our position that tablets will make up 75% of all video viewing, in our Faultline Revisited paper.
He told us at the time to look at the data he presented at the Connected TV Summit. We analysts never like to agree too firmly with other analysts, it takes the steam out of our own argument, so we didn’t blame David when he said that yes watching TV on a tablet was becoming hugely popular, but no it wasn’t replacing big screen viewing? More likely it would displace second screens.
We came back with the question of how much viewing goes on, does he think, in the average 3 second screens per household (in the US) which tablets might replace, but he insisted that, ‘We have a lot more research on this, but we can’t see any signs of a dramatic decline in the need for at least one big screen.’
We don’t disagree. Our point in the Faultline Revisited is that if you continue to need one big screen, but use it less often, and do not base your most intimate viewing experiences on it, then what’s the point of replacing it. Our thinking is that if 20% of large device replacements are deferred at least a year, and if second screens are almost entirely replaced with tablets, that’s a huge shortfall in the number of TVs sold, causing the industry a major problem.
But tablet viewing will also change the way TV content is constructed, especially once it becomes obvious that viewing is far less on a big screen. First let’s show you the graph he showed at Connect TV Summit.
This comes by asking people who have a tablet AND who have watched TV/Movies via the internet during the past month to say How they watched them. Sewe PDF copy for graphs.
So we took those lines and just carried them on at their current rates for a while longer and got something like this, which shows the trends only towards the end of this year
Tablet viewing really IS taking off by the day, as these devices get acquired, it is automatic.
But David’s company seems to have gone a lot further with a release this week about how Smart TVs are getting a thumbs down. Now this is more or less how all consumers form their opinion, they ask people they know, but in this case Strategy Analytics did interviews with the same 8 families they had interviewed before about what they watch TV on. The headline gives it all away ‘Online Video Lead Adopters Bypass the Smart TV with Personal Devices’, in other words family members who have smart TVs, but also tablets and PCs, are all watching TV on a tablet.
The report said, that even though half of the sample had acquired a smart TV over the past three years, no one was found to be using it as their main source for connected media entertainment, since they found tablets, smartphones and other connected TV devices easier to use. Here they are not saying people don’t watch TV on it, it’s just they don’t watch internet TV on it.
Early adopters who had not purchased a smart TV yet were concerned that these products were not ready to deliver an adequate experience, and were happy to continue using other connected devices instead.
One participant noted, ‘The smart TV is limited in apps and doesn’t allow you to easily search. I had a battle between the PS3 and the smart TV in which one to use, and the PS3 won.’ Faultline would conclude that if the major TV owners are going to have to find the kind of functionality that the PS3 has built up over the past 8 years or so, they have a lot of work to do.
Sure, people all over the world are buying smart TVs, but this is mostly because they are all that you CAN buy right now. And we hear re-assuring messages that more than 50% use them to connect to the internet. But equally that means that about half of the homes have no-one in them that understands what the TV does, or who don’t care. That does not bode well for replacement in a few years’ time.
“OEMs and app developers are failing to provide smart TV users with apps and services that enhance the TV experience,” says Taryn Tulay, Senior Analyst in the User Experience Practice. “Furthermore, an intuitive remote that works fluidly with the UI and provides ease of text input with an integrated touchscreen is imperative to consumers finding the apps and services functional on a TV.”
The study concludes that while traditional TV will continue to play a key role in domestic lifestyles, people will increasingly rely on the convenience of personal devices and OTT TV/video services to support their entertainment needs.
We emailed it over to David, ‘Yes it’s good,’ he said, ‘I wrote the release myself.’ That’s one more convert to the cause.
Meanwhile another bombshell for innovation at the TV set, also from Strategy Analytics this time from its ComsumerMertrix, is that in another study it found that 43% of people would either never allow a camera or sensing device to be connected to their TV to would not allow it to watch them. Only 14% said it would be fine.
At a time in the industry when people are going to be wondering whether it is worth the hassle of watching the big TV screen, when they can watch precisely what they want and privately on a tablet, why put an impediment in their way like a camera that reports on who is watching the TV. Not going to happen.
Which makes the news this week that a subsidiary of Alan Sugar’s Amstrad called Amscreen, which offers digital advertising displays, has decided to experiment with the very self-same face detection technology, first brought to our attention by Intel, to use to decide what adverts to show people as they walk by.
Surely this is something that will be made illegal, with private organizations taking video footage of passersby that could be used in god knows what way. It has been recognized that if you put a camera on a TV, the customer has to have to have the ability to turn it off, but how can people it doesn’t even know be afforded that same privacy.
The statement said cameras installed in Amscreen’s digital advertising display screens are able to determine the gender, age, date, time and volume of the viewers to help brands. This is a crime waiting to be made illegal. Mister sugar, you’re fired.