Marketplace

Thursday night games are the ideal platform to experiment with this new form of sports streaming, says Glenn Hower, a research analyst at Parks Associates, a consumer technology market research firm based in Dallas. “Despite the success of the league’s other prime-time offerings with Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football, Thursday nights haven't resonated the same with viewers,” Hower wrote in an email. With social events and the weekend on the horizon, it is harder to ...read more

Brett Sappington at Parks Associates is one of the people keeping track of the changes in video consumption, and both Verizon and AT&T use his research.

"They've definitely taken two different directions," he said.

"There are so many roles that [Verizon and AT&T] could play," Sappington said. "I'm really curious to see what they will do and where they see the opportunity in the market."

From the article "As AT&T issues results, strategy is key to future" by Nova Safo ...read more

The idea that cable uninstaller is a hot new career track says a lot about why ESPN's corporate overlords are tightening belts. Cord-cutting customers are devastating.

"Consumers are looking for content in other places," said Brett Sappington, who directs research at Parks Associates. "So if your revenues are based significantly off of cable TV, then you get hit pretty hard by that."

Even if you hate sports and don't even know what channel ESPN is on, the network gets yo ...read more

We’re getting a look at what AT&T plans to do with DirecTV after buying it for $48.5 billion. Monday, AT&T announced its plan to bundle TV and mobile phone service into a package with an introductory rate of $200 a month. It’s a bundle that’s different from existing ones.

“The new AT&T bundle is unique in that it’s a nationwide bundle,” says Brett Sappington, director of research at Parks Associates, a consulting firm that focuses on digital technology.

That’s the benefi ...read more

There’s also the data that can be harvested from freeloaders. Imagine the would-be addict as a college sophomore, who hasn’t quite cut the cord with mom and dad’s membership. Once he has a job, it could be easier to figure out how to get him to subscribe if the company already knows what he likes to watch.

“They are holding on to their data in order to use that in the future,” says Glenn Hower, author of the Parks Associates report.

He says about 20 percent of 18 to 24-y ...read more

Silicon Valley is grappling with a delicate balance: Keeping these products easy to use while implementing enough security to keep customers comfortable with using them.

"The out-of-the-box experience when you start up a product [is that] when you unpackage it, put it on the wall, it needs to be very seamless," says Tom Kerber, who heads research into the Internet of Things at Parks Associates. If customers have to grapple with too many steps to implement security protocols, ...read more

Netflix is now streaming more 4K content, including Breaking Bad and a few movies. That follows a trend of growing 4K content, which is also called Ultra HD.

It’s very unlikely you’ll be watching, because only a handful of people have 4K TVs. Maybe you’ve never even heard of 4K -- and that’s OK, because hardly anyone has.

“Awareness is incredibly low,” says Glenn Hower of Parks Associates, a consumer technology research company. “Consumers, they aren’t familiar with the ...read more

Not unless the chain makes other changes, says Harry Wang, director of mobile research at Parks Associates: "They either have to beef up their online program or try to find some really unique kind of merchandise to survive.”

Wang says RadioShack will also have to contend with competition as manufacturers and other big retail chains start their own repair programs.

From the article, "Can Radio Shack fix it?" by Nancy Marshall-Genzer.