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

Experts: Wal-Mart Pay Needs Perks

More than 25 percent of U.S. smartphone owners use payment apps at least once a month, according to recent data compiled by Dallas-based research and consulting firm Parks Associates. The firm said...

As Cord Cutting Grows 85% of Americans 22–37 Subscribe to a Streaming Service

This week the research group Parks Associates released an updated look at the state of streaming video. According to the study, 85% of American millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) now subs...

Media Industry – Future of Pay TV In An OTT Landscape Pt.2 – Ericsson

Earlier this year, Parks Associates published a study highlighting that the number of paid OTT video subscriptions in Europe is still lagging behind the U.S. For instance, while 64 percent of U.S. bro...

Alert! Will the Cable Eco-System Begin To Crash Tomorrow?

And, oh yeah, there are already quite a number of STBs that allow for streaming content that includes programming from so-called broadcast and cable networks as well as the major streaming services su...