IT News Online

"Smartphone ownership among U.S. broadband households jumped to 28% in 2009, compared with 9% in 2007 prior to iPhone's launch," said Harry Wang, Director of Health and Mobile Product Research at Parks Associates. Booming smartphone sales have shaken up the mobile world and redefined the mobile lifestyle by inspiring consumers to seek new uses and applications while on the go. We expect smartphone sales to continue to increase significantly over the next five years. By then, smar ...read more

"The meteoric growth rate of digital photo frames has cooled off, although
consumer familiarity and its appeal as a premium gift choice will keep demand
healthy over the next few years," said Harry Wang, director, health and mobile
product research, Parks Associates.

Parks Associates states that in this new steady-growth stage, many early-growth
drivers like expanded retail availability and price discounts and promotions
will have less impact on the future growth o ...read more

"Europe is a strong market for connected CE, and service providers continue to be active in enabling advanced services and deploying devices such as hybrid set-tops," said Stuart Sikes, President, Parks Associates. "The worldwide telco /IPTV subscriber base exceeded 20 million in 2008, and France had over 27% growth in IPTV subscribers. France Telecom has been aggressive in connecting and managing consumer services, and Mr. Dubois's insight will be invaluable to CONNECTIONS(TM) ...read more

Surfers have little loyalty when it comes to social networking websites, according to a new study from US research house Parks Associates.

MySpace users are chronically unfaithful, according to Parks Associates' Web 2.0 & the New Net report on the social networking market.

The study found that nearly 40 percent of MySpace users also keep profiles on other social networking sites such as Friendster and Facebook.

Loyalty among the smaller social networking sites is eve ...read more

"In the end, it is a very different message from what the supporters of .11n were saying," Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst at Parks Associates, told vnunet.com.

While a twofold increase would still allow for devices like Apple's iTV to stream compressed video, it may not be adequate for streaming uncompressed HD videos.

"There seems to be this movement afoot to address uncompressed video, particularly uncompressed HD," said Scherf. "In that sense, I am ...read more

Media servers for home users are starting to emerge as a significant product category, with 50 million units being sold in 2010, according to a new study by Parks Associates.

The market research firm said it defines media servers as networked devices having hard drives and software for distributing media to various locations throughout the home. It said that as media is increasingly distributed over the internet, home users will turn to media servers for a variety of reasons ...read more

"The laptop market is a mile wide and an inch deep," John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates, said in a statement.

Even though new notebooks are available for less than $US500, buyers taking advantage of the low prices are usually getting a laptop to complement their existing desktop or notebook, Barrett said.

From the article "Laptop buyers are usually coming back for more, " by Antone Gonsalves.

According to a report by Parks Associates, spending on Internet advertising will account for 10% of total U.S. ad dollars in 2010, doubling from 5% in 2004. This increase represents a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 14% over the next five years.

The report, "The Changing Face of Advertising in the Digital Age", also finds that almost 21% of Internet users consider Internet advertising as the most relevant ad format for them, outscoring more traditional media formats su ...read more