Global information technology spending is projected to reach $4.1 trillion this year, up 8.4% from 2020, reported Gartner Wednesday. All IT spending segments are forecast to have “positive growth” through 2022, it said. The highest growth will come from devices (up 14%) and enterprise software (up 10.8%), “as organizations shift their focus to providing a more comfortable, innovative and productive environment for their workforce,” said Gartner. “IT no longer just supports corporate operations as it traditionally has, but is fully participating in business value delivery,” said Gartner Vice President John-David Lovelock. “Not only does this shift IT from a back-office role to the front of business, but it also changes the source of funding from an overhead expense that is maintained, monitored and sometimes cut, to the thing that drives revenue.”

Connected TV advertising was “resilient” in Q2 2020, even as advertisers pulled back from most channels, including advanced TV, blogged Peentoo Patel, Google Ad Manager group product manager, Friday. Programmatic advertising also endured in the height of the COVID-19-inspired downturn, “declining much less than traditional reservations,” due to the flexibility it offered publishers and advertisers, said Patel, citing a Google ad report. Globally in 2020, more ads continued to be viewed on connected TVs than other devices, but the environments where people are watching are changing, said Patel, saying in-app impressions had significant gains in 2020 “as more people moved towards over-the-top streaming apps and adopted CTV devices.” When the pandemic hit in Q2, “all live events froze,” Patel noted, with overall advanced TV ad impressions dropping 18% year on year, while connected TV impressions grew 14%. When live sports began to return in Q3, TV ad impressions recovered, growing 40% from Q2, “much faster than VOD,” mostly on big-screen smart TVs, Patel said. In Q4 global ad impressions grew more than 60% year on year, with CTV holding the biggest share.

Global eSIM device installations will reach 3.4 billion by 2025, up 180% from the 1.2 billion projected for 2021, reported Juniper Research Monday. Juniper predicts global eSIM deployments across “consumer verticals” will increase by 170% over the next four years, “with widespread adoption reliant on backing from network operators,” it said. “Fragmentation of hardware vendors in the cellular IoT device market will require each vertical to adopt a combination of wireless technologies, hardware, and management tools.”

The number of Americans who watch TV via cable or satellite plunged from 76% in 2015 to 56% this year, said a Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults fielded Jan. 25-Feb. 18. Some 27% are cord-cutters, and 17% have never had a pay-TV subscription, it said. Seventy-one percent of those who don’t use cable or satellite TV services say they can access the content they want online; 69% say the cost of pay-TV is too high; 45% say they don’t watch TV often. The drop in pay-TV subscribers reflects the "changing landscape of connectivity and media," said Pew Wednesday, with internet streaming services like Netflix and Hulu growing in popularity, a trend accelerated by the pandemic. Demographics play a role, Pew noted, with 34% of respondents ages 18-29 getting TV through cable or satellite, down 31 points from 2015. Of the 30-49 age group, 46% get TV that way, a 27-point drop. Among those ages 50-64, 66% are pay-TV subscribers, down 14 points for the period; 81% of Americans 65 and older are pay-TV customers, down 5 points. About 53% of nonsubscribers 18-29 don’t have pay TV at home because they don’t watch TV often; for 30-49-year-olds, it's 47%, a third for 50-plus. Nearly 80% of nonsubscribers 50 and older gave cost as the reason, 72% of the 30-49 group and 57% for ages 18-29.

High consumer demand, supply constraints and cost increases put the brakes on consumer tech promotional activity April-December, reported NPD Thursday. The number of CE products sold on promotion dropped 4 percentage points year on year to 61%. The biggest shift was in degree of discounting, with TVs and PCs showing a “significant shift to lower discount levels” vs. 2019, it said. In 2019, 81% of TVs 60 inches and larger had a discount of at least 10%, vs. 67% last year. In notebook PCs, the $500-plus class had promotional discounts of at least 10% on 70% of sales, vs. 78% the prior year, resulting in a 3% increase in average selling price (ASP). In the sub-$500 segment, promotional volume share fell from 60% to 32%, while ASPs grew more than 10%, said NPD. “Products that were promoted saw ASPs rise as the level of discounts declined,” said analyst Stephen Baker, and consumers “chose to trade-up to more premium products.” Discounting was used “much more strategically to target specific products and categories, where there was an opportunity to create incremental demand or gain market share versus the normal focus of using promotions to create demand,” he said.

MVPDs lost 7.2 million subscribers last year, reported Kagan Monday, saying virtual MVPD services “blunted the overall erosion” of consumers with a package of live linear channels, but the 2.7 million new vMVPD subscribers fell far short of offsetting cable, telco and satellite cancellations. MVPD losses slowed in Q4 to 1.5 million, but the full-year decline “underscored that the impacts of the pandemic amplified cord cutting instead of insulating an industry built around home entertainment.” For Q4, the vMVPD segment didn’t hold its momentum, gaining 223,000 subscribers to finish the year with 12.5 million. Some 6.8 million households cut the cord last year, said analyst Tony Lenoir. Fewer than 67% of U.S. households have a traditional pay-TV or vMVPD service with a package of live, linear channels, Kagan said, and fewer than 57% subscribe to traditional pay TV.

Global smart speaker unit shipments reached a record 150 million in 2020, largely on new model introductions from Apple, Amazon, Google, Alibaba and Baidu for the holiday sales season, said Strategy Analytics Wednesday. Smart displays were 26% of the total smart speaker market during Q4, up from 22% in Q4 2019. The growing availability of models with different sizes and price points is contributing to strong growth for smart displays, SA said. Amazon’s 16.5 million units were 28.3% of global smart speaker shipments in Q4 as the October Prime Day and strong seasonal demand returned Echo devices to year-on-year growth, 4%, after two quarters with volume declines. Second-place Google had a 22.6% share; its 13.2 million shipments declined from 13.9 million in Q4 2019. Apple’s global shipments grew 74% year on year to 4.6 million after the launch of the $99 HomePod Mini in November, giving the company 7.8% market share, its highest to date, up 3.1% from the year-ago quarter. Component shortages hurt the category in Q4, and stock supplies will continue to be tight through early 2021, said analyst David Watkins.

Consumer TV-buying intentions plunged sharply in February from January, even as overall consumer confidence increased for the second straight month, according to preliminary Conference Board data released Tuesday. Nielsen canvassed 5,000 U.S. homes through Feb. 11, finding 9.2% planning to buy a new TV set in the next six months. We have covered the board’s monthly reports on TV-buying intentions for at least the past three decades. Except for the 9% in August saying a new TV set was in their plans (see 2008250054), we can’t recall a lower score. Consumers’ assessment of economic conditions improved in February, said the board, suggesting a shift in thinking toward long-deferred discretionary purchases may have affected TV-buying plans. “Consumers remain cautiously optimistic, on the whole, about the outlook for the coming months,” it said. “Notably, vacation intentions -- particularly, plans to travel outside the U.S. and via air -- saw an uptick this month, and are poised to improve further as vaccination efforts expand.”

NPD pegged 2020 as a year of “historic growth” for the Canadian consumer tech industry, with sales up 18% from a year earlier, said the point-of-sale reporting service Thursday. NPD expects 4% consumer tech sales growth in Q1 compared with the 2020 quarter, but tough comparisons with the monumental growth in the final three quarters of 2020 will result in a 10% decline in 2021, it said. It’s forecasting additional 1% declines in 2022 and 2023. The consumer tech space will see a slowdown from 2020 but will surpass 2019 levels, said NPD. “Pull forward purchases of high ticket items such as notebooks and TVs will impact sales opportunities in 2021 and 2022,” it said. “The 2020 pandemic drove the technology space in Canada to its highest ever dollar sales levels,” said NPD analyst Chris Brugman. “Consumer spend on higher ticket items for in-home work, learning and entertainment was an unexpected windfall for the industry.”

Remote work and learning drove global laptop demand to its highest level ever in Q4, reported Strategy Analytics Tuesday. Shipments in the quarter increased 54% year over year to 69.7 million units, while unit volume for 2020 jumped 32% to 226.8 million, said SA. “Strain on the supply chain and rising component costs will be a key concern as demand is expected to stay high in 2021,” said analyst Eric Smith. Lenovo again finished the year with top global share, though its lead over second-place HP fell to 1.2 points from 3.9 points in 2019. The 125.68 million laptop and tablet imports to the U.S. in 2020 under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule’s 8471.30.01 subheading was a 22.6% increase from 2019 and the most in any year since the Census Bureau began reporting that HTS category in 2007 (see report, Feb. 9 issue).