TORONTO – As content gets more and more personal and increasingly interactive, it only makes sense that the gadgets and gear we’re watching all that content with are getting far more personal, too.
“The move from ‘household’ to ‘personal’ continues,” says the quarterly Fast Forward Report from Toronto’s Solutions Research Group. “The most popular gadgets in Q1 were digital cameras, followed by game consoles/handhelds, wireless devices, digital media players and laptops. And nearly half of the digital media players sold were video capable,” says the report.
When asked what technology they got over the holiday shopping season (and post-holiday sale season, 23% reported getting a digital camera and 21% a gaming console. Wireless phones were next at 19% followed by digital media players (like an iPod) at 14% and laptops at 12%.
Within those wireless numbers, 15% said they bought or received a regular cell phone, 3% said a BlackBerry and 2% another smart phone (Treo, Q, HTC, etc.)
That doesn’t mean people have quit buying great big high definition TV sets for their homes. Far from it, in fact. HD sets and desktop PCs were the leading household technologies purchased.
However – and this is an ongoing issue for cable and satellite companies, only half of those buying an HD set also reported getting an HD set-top box with the unit, says the report.
Cable on demand and PVR use is going up, too, in Canada, but we still lag the U.S. in that regard. Overall cable on-demand use among digital cable subscribers inched up to its highest level (46%) in four quarters. PVRs are now in 20% of digital cable and DTH households translating to some 1.3 million households in Canada – still less than half the penetration level in the U.S.
One of the surprises in this quarter’s research is the extent of professional content consumption on the Internet (over 80%).
“Clearly, the early ‘cat-on-a-skateboard’ image of online video is changing rapidly as professionally produced video is popping up everywhere from TV and video sites to newspaper sites and big portals, in addition being a staple on YouTube (legally or not),” reads the report.
Fast Forward Quarterly is Solutions Research Group’s ongoing trend research study that provides insight into the forces shaping the Canadian consumer landscape. 2008 Q1 research was conducted in March 2008, among 1,000 Canadians (aged 12 and up) online using a professionally-managed national online panel.
