"smartphones" articles

While the use of smart home devices and appliances is mostly among early adopters, many markets will inch closer to the early majority in the next few years. The integration of new technologies in consumers’ lives is forcing service providers and manufacturers to rethink technology solutions to meet the changing needs of the post-pandemic world. Convenience, comfort, and peace of mind remain the leading drivers of smart home device adoption. But, other factors influencing growth...

After email and video communications, cloud storage services are the next most common tool used by remote workforces. These solutions enhance collaboration beyond traditional, thread-based file exchange capabilities, adding centralized data backup, coordinated sharing among teams, and version control history for concurrent editing. As with videoconferencing, platforms like Apple iCloud, Dropbox, and Microsoft OneDrive were already familiar to most remote workers pre-pandemic, having...

Earlier in the year, the original iPhone celebrated its 14 th anniversary.  Steve Jobs, Apple’s then CEO, took the stage at Macworld and amazed the globe with a product that literally changed how we communicate, work, and enjoy video and music content.  One could also argue that the iPhone (and the smartphone category in general) ultimately enabled social media apps to ascend to the level of popularity they currently enjoy.  In short, it’s evolved into a device that...

In early April, LG announced it would be shutting down its long-struggling smartphone business by July 31 st , 2021. The move did not exactly come as a surprise; LG’s mobile division had been running at a loss for 23 consecutive quarters, the company had hinted at hard decisions ahead for its mobile division, and rumors have swirled about the company being unsuccessful at attempts to find a buyer for the unit. Nonetheless, the move marks a significant exit by a major brand - and is a...

Parks Associates recently released the Market Snapshot, Voice as a Lifeline and the Transformation of Home Telephony , which explores how home telephony is transforming in ways that provide renewed validation of legacy technologies even while new technologies accelerate adoption. The whitepaper, developed in partnership with DECT Forum , reports that North American and European telecommunications providers have seen a significant increase in home telephony beginning last year with the...

After years of waiting and planning, the era of 5G has arrived. Within the past 12 months, all four of the major US mobile service providers (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint & Verizon) have introduced services. European operators introduced services in countries including Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK and South Korea rolled out 5G services in April. Throughout the globe, carriers have announced plans to have 5G networks operational by the end of 2019 or early 2020. 5G has long...

As adoption of smart home devices continues to grow, the smart home needs an interface to connect all the moving pieces in the home. For devices that are connected to cloud APIs, voice control has been transformational. While the UI experience is compelling, the true value of voice assistants is in their ability to unify control of fragmented and even disparate ecosystems. Consumers with smart home devices that are not part of a larger home control system (which is the majority of smart...

We’ve all heard the expression before—smartphones have peaked. And it's true; Parks Associates consumer surveys find that smartphone adoption in the US reached its highest point in 2017, and has slowly declined ever since. Going hand in hand with smartphone decline is a second, more counterintuitive trend. Consumers are going back to basics—basic phones, that is. Between 2017 and 2019, the percentage of broadband households with mobile phone service but no smartphones rose...