Hub research has released numbers showing the dominance of smart TV in US households. 8-10 homes have a smart TV and 61 % of televisions in US homes are smart TVs. While this is being lauded as some kind of milestone it is simply a reflection that consumers really have no choice but to buy a smart TV when they get a new set. There is no doubt that people are enjoying the features and apps. But the fact that they are buying them does not mean that they prefer them. They are the only choice. There will soon be a day when over 90 percent of TV sets in the us are smart TVs. People will buy new ones to replace non-smart TVs as they go bad or need to get replaced for one reason or another.
Put another way, if manufacturers decided that 90 percent of new cars would be blue, lots of people would buy brand-new blue cars.
The important part of the story concerning smart TVs has almost nothing to do with the people who own them. Its about the advertising industry and fights between different platform owners. I think I speak for the vast majority of people when I say that most people just want to watch the game, watch their shows and in a number of cases have a great screen to play video games on. And all of the other numbers that people in the media flip over are irrelevant to everyone else.
People want a TV, they want it to be easy enough to use and they typically do not want to pay an exorbitant price for it. That’s it. And as long as there are truckloads of inexpensive smart TVs being unloaded into Walmart, Target, Costco and other major retailers they will be what people buy. In the end the media would look a lot less silly to drop the story.
