Consumers in the U.S. are utilizing more advanced technologies now than they were two years ago, but they may be lagging behind their counterparts in emerging markets.
According to a recent report conducted by Accenture, computers (desktop or laptop), mobile phones and DVD players are the most-owned devices in the U.S. in 2009.
Regular (CRT or tube) TVs are on the decline, as 77 percent of respondents owned them in 2007, 70 percent in 2008 and 66 percent in 2009. On the other hand, high-definition plasma or LCD TVs have risen from 26 percent in 2007, 39 percent in 2008 and 52 percent in 2009.
Web-enabled mobile phones/smartphones were owned by 29 percent of respondents in 2009, up from 17 percent in 2008 and just 8 percent in 2007.
GPS devices (32 percent), Blu-ray players (13 percent), netbooks (10 percent), e-books (5 percent) and 3D TVs (3 percent) were all new devices included in the 2009 study, which gleaned responses from 2,000 respondents.
Still, Accenture notes that consumers in emerging markets are twice as likely as those in mature markets to buy and use consumer technology in the next year, and are even more willing to pay a premium for “environmentally friendly” consumer electronic products.
The 2010 “Consumer Electronics Products and Services Usage Report” is based on a survey of 16,000 consumers in four “mature” countries (U.S., Germany, France, Japan) and four “emerging” countries (China, India, Malaysia, Singapore).
Among the online activities that Internet users in emerging markets participate in more than those in mature markets are listening to music online (78 percent vs. 58 percent), watching/posting videos on the Internet (74 percent vs. 59 percent), connecting with people on social networking sites (81 percent vs. 50 percent), watching videos on a mobile phone or other mobile device (48 percent vs. 23 percent) and microblogging (35 percent vs. 13 percent).
Accenture also noted that consumers in emerging markets were more than two-and-a-half times as likely to buy a smartphone during the next year (52 percent vs. 20 percent) and more than twice as likely to have purchased a smartphone in the past year (67 percent vs. 32 percent).
Mobile phones are set to overtake PCs around the globe as the most common device for Web access by 2013, according to Gartner. The company forecasts that by then, there will be 1.82 billion browser-equipped enhanced phones, more than the 1.78 billion PCs that will be in use then.
Sources:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007465
http://newsroom.accenture.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=4921
https://microsite.accenture.com/landing_pages/consumertechnologyusage/Documents/AccentureConsumerTech2010.pdf
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=120590
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