Children worldwide are increasingly growing up viewing TV programming online and on-demand, said S&P Global Friday. In about half of homes with children that were surveyed, parents let their kids choose what they watch, and 66% of parents report using some form of parental controls. Most parents canvassed impose rules to limit their children’s daily TV viewing. In the U.S., U.K. and Sweden, the portion of households with children viewing subscription VOD content is about equal to that of live TV, it said.

Fewer vMVPD subscribers also are MVPD customers as virtual operators expand their offerings, The Diffusion Group said Wednesday. It said since the mid 2018 peak of 37% of vMVPD subscribers also paying for a traditional pay-TV service, the overlap has now declined to 23.1%. It said Hulu Live TV and YouTube TV, which dominate the vMVPD market, both have the big four networks in their lineups, cutting the need for a second service.

Overall video viewing in U.S. broadband households grew 45% from Q3 2018 to Q1 2020, said Parks Associates Tuesday. Transactional video service use doubled to 14%, it said, citing a Q1 survey of 10,000 households.

Four in five U.S. TV households have at least one internet-connected TV device, including connected smart TVs, Blu-ray players, video game systems or streaming media devices, reported Leichtman Research Group Friday. That’s up from 74% in 2018. Some 40% of adults in U.S. TV households view TV from a streaming device daily, vs. 29% two years ago, Leichtman said. By age, 18% of viewers 55 and older watch TV on a connected device daily, 48% for ages 35-54, and 55% for ages 18-34, said the researcher. Among those with a connected TV device, 64% own three or more, with a mean of 4.1 per household. Fifty-eight percent have at least one connected smart TV. The nearly 400 million connected TV devices in U.S. don’t include pay-TV set-top boxes that can be used to access content from the internet, said principal Bruce Leichtman.

VMVPD gains in Q1 from Hulu with Live TV and YouTube TV were erased by declines from Sling TV and AT&T TV Now and Sony’s shuttering of PlayStation Vue in January, Kagan reported. Broadband-delivered services lost 261,000 subscriptions, a 2.8% drop, to 9.2 million. Subs to MVPDs fell 2.4%. In a revised outlook, Kagan noted the “cruel irony” that home isolation should have slowed multichannel defections, but programming interruptions and “ensuing economic turmoil” are expected to “blunt the benefits.” The researcher forecasts an 11% drop in MVPD subs this year, with household penetration under 56% by year-end. Virtual services, which have “narrowed their cord cutter appeal,” will be in less than 10% of occupied households (nearly 11 million) by year-end, it said Friday. Households filling entertainment needs with online-only services are expected to rise to 24.7 million (19%) by Dec. 31.

Pay-TV providers lost 2 million net video subscribers in Q1, the biggest quarterly loss ever and double those of the 2019 quarter, reported Leichtman Research Group Thursday. Satellite TV services lost just over 1 million subs, vs. 810,000 a year ago. The top seven cable companies shed 595,000 vs. a 335,000 decline; phone companies lost 125,000 vs. a 105,000 loss. The top publicly reporting vMVPDs -- AT&T TV NOW, Hulu + Live TV and Sling TV -- lost about 320,000 vs. 225,000 net adds. The record net losses were partly due to the impact of COVID-19 but don’t solely reflect consumers' dropping services, said analyst Bruce Leichtman: “Several providers cited a decrease in connects as a key component of net losses in the quarter, rather than an increase in disconnects.”

Smartphones could overtake TVs within a year as the most-owned tech product in U.S. households, said a Wednesday CTA report. Smartphones are now owned by 92% of homes -- a point higher than 2019 -- while the number of U.S. homes with a TV dropped 2 points, said a poll of 2,612 U.S. adults March 31-April 6. Household laptop ownership was 76%. Smart home technologies gained household penetration, with smart speakers having the highest penetration at 39%, up 8 points. Some 22% of households plan to buy a smart speaker over the next 12 months -- 69% repeat owners, 31% first-time buyers. Products with the highest level of buying interest are portable battery chargers (39% of households), smartphones (36%) and wireless earbuds (27%). Twenty-four percent plan to buy TVs, 23% laptops and 21% videogame consoles, it said.

Omdia slashed forecasts for the worldwide semiconductor market Thursday, predicting a 2.5% rise in revenue to $439.9 billion vs. previous projections of 5.5% growth. The market for wireless equipment market is seen falling by 4.7% from 2019; wireless chip sales are seen dropping to 2% from 4.8%. As of March, Omdia expects smartphone shipments to reach 1.2 billion units for the year. Automotive will be a “major drag” on the semiconductor market, with 2020 vehicle production expected to decline by 12.4%, resulting in a 7.5% drop for automotive semiconductors. The ramifications of the coronavirus on the global economy “have come into sharper focus,” said analyst Myson Robles-Bruce. The pandemic has disrupted supply chains and market demand across all component categories, he said, with Japan “already in recession” and the U.S. and Europe expected to enter recessions this quarter. A bright spot is the industrial semiconductor market, seen expanding by 2.5% this year, driven by the medical sector, where chip demand is forecast to grow 5.9%. “COVID-19 is causing rapid reallocation of priorities and funding in the medical sector,” Robles-Bruce said, citing a demand increase for ventilators and surgical supplies, and a boost in telehealth for virtual doctor visits.

The roughly 7% decline in cable subscribers top companies had in 2019 was "a free fall of traditional cable TV," and 2020 losses will likely eclipse them, CCG Consulting President Doug Dawson blogged Friday: Uncertainty of household incomes will likely drive even more to move to cheaper entertainment.

The global smart speaker market grew 53% year on year in Q4, driven by Eastern Europe (705%) and Asia Pacific (116%), said Futuresource Monday. Asia Pacific had 39% of global shipments. Smart sound bars grew 60% year-on-year worldwide, it said, though still a small percentage of the overall smart speaker market. Smart display shipments are growing as their screen sizes increase, said Futuresource, with some 14.5 million units shipping last year vs. 3 million in 2018. “The demand for larger screen sizes, improved Wi-fi technology and enhanced audio quality commands a premium cost, despite the average price of home audio devices declining once again in Q4,” said analyst Guy Hammett: Vendors will need to adopt aggressive pricing strategies and offer giveaways to gain market share.