The Columbus Dispatch

Harry Wang, director of mobile and health products research at Dallas-based Parks Associates, said the digital fitness tracker is the fastest-growing category in the connected health device market, and Fitbit is the clear leader, with a more than 50 percent market share. There will be demand for various types of fitness trackers. Some older people, for example, may want a wearable just for measuring walking distances and steps.

From the article "Watch Company Buys Way Into F ...read more

Thermostats that collect data on you aren’t a hypothetical. In fact, they’re quickly becoming the standard: By 2017, market research firm Parks Associates estimates that more than half of the thermostats sold in the United States will be “smart.” And one of the biggest players in the market is Nest, offered by Google parent-company Alphabet, which makes much of its revenue by tracking our behavior and selling us targeted ads.

From the article "Many Consumers Wary Of Giving U ...read more

The U.S. tech-support industry makes about $30 billion in annual revenue, according to research by Parks Associates, a consulting firm. And with the growth of the Internet of Things — devices such as thermostats, door locks and hot-water heaters that are connected to the Internet to gather and share data — the need for home-tech service is expected to grow.

Devices such as Dropcam, a Wi-Fi video-streaming camera for home security, aren’t the easiest to set up at home, even f ...read more

But there’s one big hitch. For any of these scenarios to work, you’ll have to have devices that can talk to each other. Many will be able to perform these functions only if you have compatible equipment in your house. If you buy one smart home device, you might find that your choices for other gadgets could be circumscribed if you want them to all work together.

“When they buy their first smart product, (consumers) have the expectation that it will work with other smart prod ...read more

Sometimes the company is a pioneer, such as when it added a headphone jack to its remote so users could listen to shows or music without disturbing others in their home. Other times, as with voice search, which previously was available on Amazon’s Fire TV box, and with Roku’s Chromecast-like streaming stick, it’s been a quick follower.

“Roku is one of the few players in the space that this is all they do,” said Barbara Kraus, an analyst who covers the streaming-media-player ...read more

And that might be just the start. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich demonstrated at CES how a connected door lock might unlock automatically when a security camera recognizes the owner’s face. Hosain Rahman, CEO of Jawbone, described how his company’s latest Up activity tracker could automatically tell your lights to turn on when it sensed you were getting up from bed.

“I don’t have to program that,” said Tom Kerber, director of research at Parks Associates, a technology consulting f ...read more

Parks Associates analyst Harry Wang predicts, though, that, at best, smartwatch sales will top out at 120 million around 2018 — a far cry from smartphones and tablets. More than 1 billion smartphones and more than 195 million tablets were sold last year.

From the article "Wearable tech sees slim sales in market." 

"Content owners are a little hesitant to jump into this new model because it is disruptive to their distribution models currently in place," said Laura Allen Phillips, research analyst for Parks Associates.

From the article, “Lawsuits might slow access to entertainment via cloud”