Beta News

One in ten US broadband households plan to buy a smartwatch in 2015, however, 84 percent of them won’t spend over $250 on the device, according to recent wearable research.

The survey, from Parks Associates, suggests that the price point of $100 (£65) to $250 (£160) is roughly equivalent to a high-end fitness tracker.

In addition, the study reveals that those who are willing to spend more than $500 (£320) on a smartwatch will only buy one if it works without a smartphone ...read more

On the heals of Amazon shipping its Fire Stick, a new HDMI dongle that provides similar capabilities to the previously released Fire TV, the market for streaming devices has continued to grow. And it's also getting more competitive, as each company improves its offerings.

A new study published by Parks Associates shows that a record ten percent of US households now own a streaming device. That still seems a small number, but perspective is needed. First, it's growing, and se ...read more

Since Blu-ray became the unofficial successor to DVD, a number of analysts predicted that sales of the high definition media would eventually come to offset any declines in DVD sales. Parks Associates analysts went so far as to predict that Blu-ray player sales would actually surpass most other electronics items during the next four years as they gain traction in the developing world. Analyst Kurt Scherf predicted that unit sales would climb to around 40 million by 2012.

From t ...read more

 At the Future of Television Conference in New York City last month, Kurt Scherf, VP and principal analyst, Parks Associates, led a panel that focused largely on DLNA home networking. Speaking with BetaNews during the conference, Scherf contended that the spec has been gaining considerable traction with vendors, particularly over the past year. 

From the article, "CES to feature DLNA media streaming on CE devices" by Jacqueline Emigh

As previously reported in BetaNews, unit sales for Blu-ray drives look likely to be lower than expected for 2008, too. Kurt Scherf, principal analyst at Parks Associates, told BetaNews in late October that total sales for the year will decline at least 25% from the firm's original projections to about 2.2 million players in the US and 4.3 million worldwide.

From the article, "Analyst: Blu-ray prices will nosedive for the holidays" by Jacqueline Emigh
 
 

In his paper "No Way to Regulate: Mobile TV in Europe," Parks Associates Director of Research John Barrett wrote, "Unfortunately, the market and technological conditions [bear] little resemblance to the GSM scenario regulators faced in the early eighties. For starters, spectrum availability differs from country to country. DVB-H is ideally suited for the UHF TV spectrum, but in some markets (the U.K., France, etc.), TV broadcasters are still using these frequencies and will not ...read more