Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

DirecTV is making an Android-powered streaming box. What gives?

“If (AT&T) had a box that came in at $35 or under, consumers would be interested,” Brett Sappington told me. He’s the senior director of research at Parks Associates, which pays extremely close attention to the over-the-top (OTT) — meaning Internet-based TV — space. “They’d buy it just to see if it worked.”

Sappington reasons that a new streaming box isn’t dead on arrival, so long as it has a stellar user interface, is feature-rich, is open to all TV app developers and is relatively cheap. An existing DirecTV Now customer, for instance, may be compelled to test out the company’s box if it promises better streaming performance — say, no buffering during any live streams — and comes with some sort of service-plus-box deal.

From the article "DirecTV is making an Android-powered streaming box. What gives?" by Jennifer Van Grove.

Previously In The News

Amazon Echo Controls 71% Of Smart-Speaker Biz: Report

A trio of new reports confirms what we kinda already know: that voice control is the happening new user interface, and that smart wireless speakers from Amazon are the dominant domicile for virtual di...

Netflix price hike probably not the last for cord cutters

Netflix — in nearly half of U.S. broadband homes, according to Parks Associates — has angered customers with past price hikes. Six years ago, Netflix lost 800,000 U.S. subscribers when it raised the p...

The One Tech Device Consumers Can’t Live Without

“Consumer concerns about data privacy and security, including both the unauthorized hacking of devices and theft of device data, consistently rank as one of the leading concerns about connecting devic...

Shopping By Voice Set To Explode

Voice shopping may also be hitting the road, as 57 percent of U.S. broadband households are interested in voice control features for their car, a new Parks Associates study shows. The biggest benef...