IT Business Edge

The category certainly shows positive momentum. Last month, Parks Associates released research that found that one quarter of U.S. smartphone owners use payment apps at least once monthly and that more than 3 million retailers use Apple Pay and Android Pay. Consumers, the research found, prefer retailer-specific apps. The top three areas payment apps are used for are food and drink, clothing and event tickets. 

From the article "Mobile Payments Still Confusing, Still Growing ...read more

Parks Associates has released numbers on smartphone sales. It found that 86 percent of broadband households in the United States have a smartphone. The numbers are similar in European countries: 76 percent of households in the UK, 82 percent in Germany, 78 percent in France and 90 percent in Spain have a smartphone.

From the article "Microsoft Announces Deals with 74 Device Makers" by Carl Weinschenk.

An interesting and not unimportant side note is that the industry must deal with security issues. This week, Parks Associates released a report that found that credential sharing – folks letting other people use their subscriptions to access programming – will cost the industry $500 million worldwide just this year.

It goes without saying that OTT is a big deal to the video industry. It doesn’t stop there, however. OTT will have tremendous impact on the capacity, general ava ...read more

In a recent blog, I discussed the results of a report by Brother on how small businesses believed that investing in new technology provided a better ROI than investing in new employees. Another statistic from that report showed that 64 percent of the respondents felt “overwhelmed” by new technology. This response isn’t surprising if you consider that another report by Parks Associates identified that small businesses spend less than $1,000 per year on technical support services. ...read more

With the U.S. tech support market set to grow to $8.25 billion by 2017, according to a new report from Parks Associates, service providers that successfully simplify, tailor and automate their tech support will reduce churn and increase customer satisfaction.

In the report, “The Future of Support: Intelligence Managing Technology” (registration required for download), the rapidly increasing demand for self-help channels in customer service and support among consumers is a sh ...read more

Parks Associates also believes that telco video is in the ascendancy. The firm’s new report, IPTV and the Digital Home, says that there will be almost 40 million telco/IPTV homes by the end of this year. The company says that represents a growth rate of 50 percent this year. In 2008, the growth rate was almost 80 percent. The firm says that the most success will be found when pure IPTV is mixed with home networking, communications and other value-added services.

From the art ...read more

"Though the premise of Parks Associates‘ report on broadband penetration is a little far afield, it does provide food for thought. The report’s main conclusion is that by 2012, 33 million homes in the United States will have broadband with speeds of 10 Mbps or higher. Just a bit more than half of that number — 5.7 million, or 9 percent of U.S. broadband homes — had such speeds at the end of last year."

"The interesting quote is from Yuanzhe (Michael) Cai , the firm’s directo ...read more