Dallas Morning News

Kurt Scherf, principal analyst with Dallas-based market research firm Parks Associates, said Netflix and others simply adapted to changing trends faster than Blockbuster.

"Blockbuster had that opportunity a few years ago to set the standard," Scherf said. "I'm just amazed that they got passed so quickly by all these other players."

"They really need to act now before Redbox really steps it up in that space, or they'll get left behind again," Scherf said.

Scherf said if Bloc ...read more

"I don't see it happening," said Kurt Scherf, principal analyst at Dallas market research firm Parks Associates.

"I think this is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, at least for now, to badly quote Shakespeare," Scherf said.

Harry Wang, director of health and mobile product research at Parks Associates, said it's not clear that there's actually a market for a "tweener" machine like a tablet – Microsoft has been failing with the concept for years – since many people a ...read more

Kurt Scherf, principal analyst for Dallas-based research firm Parks Associates, said the Comcast and Verizon systems seem like the best compromise between convenience for viewers and profitability for providers. "Although we all love free stuff online, something's going to have to pay the rent for this to continue," he said.

But ultimately, most, if not all, of the networks will probably support the subscriber-only online TV model, said Scherf at Parks Associates. He said the n ...read more

The report from international research firm Parks Associates predicts the push for healthcare reform from the Obama Administration will ultimately boost adoption of wireless technologies in healthcare. The Federal Government is committed to promoting technology that improves healthcare efficiency, evident in the stimulus funds already allocated to electronic medical records (EMR) adoption, and this focus will open new long-term opportunities for wireless providers.

Parks Associ ...read more

Providing plain old voice telephone service was a profitable and growing business for more than 100 years, but that run could be coming to an end.

Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst in Dallas with tech market research firm Parks Associates, said there's no question that land-line voice is a shrinking business. But it still has value, he said. Scherf noted that, for all his tech savvy, he still hasn't dumped his land-line phone, as making long-distance cellphone-t ...read more

 More than 10 percent of customers would switch to a new TV provider to get a multiroom DVR, according to a July survey by research firm Parks Associates.

Consumers were more enthusiastic about switching providers to get a multiroom DVR than most other hypothetical features Parks asked about in the survey, including video games, said Kurt Scherf, a vice president at the Dallas-based firm. The two features that outranked the DVR: a wide selection of on-demand TV programs, and ha ...read more

"On the other hand, Dallas-based Parks Associates reports that 20 million U.S. households -- or about 18 percent -- have no Internet access at home."
"Parks does note that the percentage of households without Internet access has dropped from 29 percent at the end of 2006, so the Internet curmudgeons are slowly venturing online, while the federal report says the percentage of cell-only users is climbing."

From the blog, "Some households using cell phones only, others have never ...read more

John Barrett, director of research for Dallas-based market research firm Parks Associates, said lackluster sales of the iPhone would be much more embarrassing for Apple than the poor performances of those previous gadgets, since the phone has been hyped so heavily.
"I think the biggest impact is Apple is going to lose this aura of invincibility that they kind of have," he said. "People look at Apple and they look at the iPod, and they think, 'Wow, this company does consumer elec ...read more