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

What’s Old Is New Again

While sales of vinyl records have been rising for a while now (Consumers like the sound quality and like the feel of vinyl records.), 2016 was a banner year. Sales hit a 28-year high -- led by David B...

How Can MVPDs ‘Recapture’ Their Primary Provider Position?

OTT video “has reshaped a successful industry,” North Texas-based research firm Parks Associates notes. With that mindset, Parks released a White Paper that analyzes a key focal point for the pay-T...

Comcast Rolls Out Its Own Connected-Home Products

Even among U.S. households with broadband service, newly released market research from Parks Associates found that less than 30 percent of respondents were familiar with where to buy smart-home produc...

Password Sharing Not the Biggest Problem for SVOD Services, Study Says

For movie and TV studios, the big bugaboo is people illegally copying or downloading their IP. For SVOD services, it’s another form of piracy – password sharing, which cost companies $500 million worl...