Providing market intelligence for more than 35 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

Roku's Lead in the Streaming Device Market Keeps Growing

In the first quarter of 2016, one-third of streaming devices owned in U.S. broadband households were manufactured by Roku. That is a pretty substantial chunk, given the big names making up the competi...

Smart Homes Are Cool, But Are They Safe?

Parks Associates found that there was little difference when it came to concerns about someone controlling smart products uninvited versus accessing the historical data products generate. In both case...

User experience key focus for smart TVs and SMPs

A Parks Associates report finds that makers of smart TVs and streaming media players (SMPs) are shifting strategies to focus on the user experience (UX) as device sales start to flatten out. Accord...

Research: 68% US homes watch NFL

The latest update of Parks Associates’ OTT Video Market Tracker analyses the launch of NFL+, the OTT subscription service operated by the NFL in the US and the market context for the service, as part...