Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

Network Security: Hacking Fears Could Scare Consumers Away from Smart-Home Devices

The rising occurrence of high-profile security hacks and privacy breaches, as well as being personally victimized, are contributing to ever-increasing consumer anxiety about smart home devices and platforms, according to new research.

Parks Associates’ latest quarterly survey of 10,000 U.S. broadband households found that almost half of consumers rank data security and privacy issues as their greatest concerns about connecting devices to the Internet, compared to other problems they may encounter, such as with tech support. Forty percent of the respondents say they have experienced a privacy or security problem with a connected device in the past year, most commonly viruses and malware.

“Our most recent data reveals that almost half of U.S. broadband households are ‘very concerned’ [rating 6-7 on a 7-point scale] about hackers getting control of connected devices and hackers getting access to data from the device,” says Parks Associates Research Analyst Brad Russell. “In tracing trending changes on these consumer attitudes from 2014 to 2016, we find that while the total share of consumers who are ‘concerned’ [rating 5-7] has not appreciably changed, the share of those that are ‘very concerned’ has grown by 6% to 7%. Similarly, the share of consumers who are ‘not concerned [rating 1-3] has shrunk by about half.”

From the article "Network Security: Hacking Fears Could Scare Consumers Away from Smart-Home Devices" by Rodney Bosch.

Previously In The News

Exclusive-Amazon's Bezos pushes Prime Video redesign focused on AI

Prime Video, like other streaming services, relies on paid placement by studios, as well as software algorithms, to dictate where content is displayed on the home screen, said Michael Goodman, directo...

Dealers: Integrating Customers’ Smart Home Devices Is Difficult

New research from Parks Associates finds U.S. security dealers are “facing renewed challenges integrating customers’ existing smart home devices into professionally installed security systems.” Ado...

Soaring Memory Prices Dampen Demand for Budget Smartphones

Rising DRAM costs are one of several factors increasing the cost of developing next-generation connected devices, observed Elizabeth Parks, president and CMO of Parks Associates, a Dallas-based market...

Twenty Years From Now, You Won’t Just Watch Sports—You’ll Enter Them

“Sports broadcasting is going to look very different in the future,” says Michael Goodman, director of entertainment research at Parks Associates, a market-research and consulting firm. “The core prod...