Consumer research is great. Just when you think you could be smart enough to predict the answers you’ll get, consumers surprise you. Which is the whole point of asking, really.
Browsing the most recent results of our monthly survey of North American consumers about device connectivity, I came across two data points, each interesting enough on its own but fascinating in opposition.
Exploring connectedness in the North American home, we asked about connected devices — the ones we have and the ones we want. Of over 3,000 consumers who own one or more devices among a popular collection of consumer electronics technologies (HDTV, set-top boxes, digital cameras, e-books, PNDs and the like), we asked them if the items they own were equipped with connectivity technology. That is, could they be networked to a wireless router in the home, for instance, or connect to the net directly?
The first surprising result: while most of those owned items aren’t connected, and some are, a good quarter of the responses for each device was “I don’t know.”
It’s OK; I’ll wait while that sinks in for you.
“I don’t know” if my digital camera is connected? If my netbook, set-top box, or HDTV is connected? A typical “don’t know” response rate for simple technology questions in a panel like this might be closer to 5%. But the lowest “don’t know” response was 17%, for e-book readers. The highest “don’t know” was a shocking 42% — for set-top boxes!
Something is seriously wrong with both the marketing and the user experience for these devices for such a large proportion of recent buyers to be unable to answer this question. I wonder if the very question created confusion for those consumers. They may have said to themselves, “Gee, is it? Maybe it ought to be — that is, if I was smart enough to buy the right one. Maybe I just didn’t notice.” You almost could picture respondents making a mental note to check their device the next chance they get.
The second interesting data came when we asked consumers with specific plans to buy one of these products in the next 6 months whether they would be looking for connectivity as a feature. Notwithstanding the uncertainty about the stuff we have already, the appetite for connectivity came through loud and clear. About 30% of consumers with purchase intent said that connectivity is at least an 8 in importance on a scale of 1 to 10. Including those who gave it a 6 or better, the responses swelled to 60% affirmative. This is consistent with the behaviors many of us have begun to exhibit around technology: we want our things to be as mobile as we are.
[The interesting question then: how many of the consumers who didn't know if their current technology is connected are among those who prize connectivity in the products they haven't yet bought? Stay tuned; that's a bit of analytical finesse we'll do and I'll share in a follow-on post.]
That’s the demand side: enthused but muddled. What about the supply side? I ‘ve railed at the consumer electronics sector for at least a year, complaining about a paucity of device innovation in the face of a looming opportunity to completely reinvent the sector with entirely new devices and experiences.
I’m not alone. I chatted the other day with Steve Tomlin, the founder of Chumby Industries, a guy who is very smart about connected devices and who helped in the preparation of our book. The company recently came out with the Chumby One under the key CE $100 price point, now back-ordered through the holidays. What’s his take on the CE sector’s response to the connectivity opportunity?
“It almost seems as if everyone is waiting for Apple to eat their lunch all over again.” Tomlin’s referring of course to the rumored Apple tablet product. ”They’re competing with an imaginary device, and assuming they’ll lose badly. And it could be true: maybe people with Kindles will end up looking like dorks whenever that comes out.”
But what about netbooks–this year’s early success story in new connected devices? “I don’t get netbooks. They’re the same as laptops–processor, screen, memory, the same stuff. The important distinctions among consumer devices are not in the components. They are in the use cases–what you expect to do with them.”
His take on many devices is that they don’t enable the passive, sit-back use cases we frequently want. In that context, the netbook isn’t much different from a smartphone, about which he complains, “A smartphone isn’t anything for you at all until you tell it what to be. But a Chumby was designed to be a passive experience. It is not a desktop full of icons waiting for your attention to be useful. When you’re not telling a Chumby what to do, it still knows what to do. You turn it on, and it happily marches along.”
Where are the next opportunities for the CE sector? ”The kitchen. It is the staple idea of all futurama thinking, but there is a real hub opportunity there for photos, the family calendar, recipes, visual voicemail, etc. And the home phone is clearly due for a complete overhaul anyway– it has hardly changed in the past 10 years while all this evolution has hit the rest of our devices. There are something like 10 million total fixed-line phones out there now, and no one is making money on them.”
What about the car as a platform for more consumer connectivity? “Taxis clearly are an opportunity, and Chumby is playing there. But given what’s happened in the economy and in Detroit, things have slowed down a lot in consumer automotive. So the gestational period for that is beyond my attention span.”
Meantime, may your holidays be filled with all the devices you want–connected ones, of course!