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

5 Reasons Why a New Apple TV Will Launch This Fall (AAPL)

Apple slashed the Apple TV price to $69 in an attempt to retain market share, but the ancient Apple TV hardware was hardly competitive. Parks Associates released a report showing that in 2014, Appl...

22 percent of smartwatch owners plan to use it for home control, automation

Parks Associates analysts say that mobile devices are becoming the de facto controllers for home automation, with apps as the critical interface between the user and the home. For example, nearly 50%...

New council will guide family caregivers to available tools

Inns told MobiHealthNews in an email that because family caregivers do not identify as caregivers, they do not seek out the caregiver tools that could help them, so the council wants to build awarenes...

Roku Shares Soar in Streaming-Device Maker’s IPO Debut

Roku faces massive, deep-pocketed competitors — but so far the 700-employee company has more than held its own in the streaming-media device market. In the first quarter of 2017, Roku had 37% share of...