British consumers are on pace this year for the first time to spend more on video streaming subscriptions and downloads than on buying and renting physical DVDs and Blu-rays, Strategy Analytics said in a Friday report. The research firm sees Britons spending 1.3 billion pounds ($1.9 billion) on streaming and downloading in 2016 (a 23.7 percent increase from 2015), compared with 956 million pounds ($1.4 billion) on DVDs and Blu-rays (down 16.3 percent from 2015), it said. Five years ago, physical media accounted for 86 percent of consumer spending on home video, but in five years it will be less than 14 percent, “with DVD/Blu-ray rental virtually extinct,” the company said. “As online provides increasing ways to access films and box-sets, physical simply can’t compete. Although many people will always prefer a physical disc, retailers will have to decide whether it’s even viable to offer that format in five years’ time.”

Broadband and information communications technologies (ICT) produced $1.02 trillion in value to the U.S. economy in 2014, or about 5.9 percent of gross domestic product, but that likely understates the impact, said a study issued Thursday by the Internet Innovation Alliance. Broadband and ICT companies employed 4.93 million workers (full-time equivalents), with an average annual compensation of $104,390, said the study by Kevin Hassett, an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar, and Robert Shapiro, chairman of Sonecon, an economic advisory firm. “The large economic gains associated with the broadband and ICT sector have flourished in an environment of light federal regulation,” said Hassett and Shapiro. They said recent FCC regulatory moves targeting "broadband ISPs and their service offerings would stifle broadband/ICT sector investment, growth and employment, negatively impacting the American economy.”

Household ownership of wireless audio, wearables and connected devices saw the largest household ownership gains since 2015, CTA said in a Thursday report that cited survey results from its latest study of consumer tech ownership and market potential trends. The findings “verify that smartphones are now a household staple, with ownership trends beginning to mirror those of televisions, which remain the most pervasive tech product in U.S. households,” CTA said. TVs are now owned in 96 percent of U.S. homes, and there are now nearly as many TVs owned (320 million) as the U.S. population (321 million), CTA said. The number of respondents who say they plan never to buy a TV increased slightly to 22 percent from 18 percent in 2015, it said. That’s “likely due to diffusion of video consumption across multiple device screens,” CTA said. Smartphones are now owned in 74 percent of U.S. homes, up 2 percentage points from 2015, CTA said. “On average, Americans now own 2.4 smartphones per household, and the expected smartphone repeat purchase is 91 percent -- comparable only to television ownership trends.” The IoT “continues to drive growth in emerging tech devices,” CTA said: Wearable fitness activity trackers are owned by 20 percent of U.S. homes, double the number that owned them last year.

Global consumer awareness of Bluetooth wireless technology is at 92 percent, said results of a Bluetooth Special Interest Group online survey. Bluetooth SIG hired research firm Lux Insights to canvass nearly 3,000 consumers in seven countries in January. Sixty-two percent of respondents reported a purchasing preference for Bluetooth-enabled products for their reliability and ease of use, Bluetooth SIG said. Other key findings: (1) On average, consumers now own nearly four Bluetooth-enabled products, compared with 2.7 in 2012; (2) Bluetooth usage has increased 32 percent since 2012; (3) of the U.S. consumers canvassed, 64 percent said they bought a Bluetooth device last year, and 62 percent of people familiar with Bluetooth say they prefer an electronic product with Bluetooth or will buy electronic products only with Bluetooth.

Some 65 percent of U.S. TV homes have at least one TV connected to the Internet via a videogame system, Wi-Fi, Blu-ray player or streaming media player, said a Leichtman Research Group report. That’s up from 44 percent in 2013 and 24 percent in 2010, LRG said. Connected TV devices in U.S. households now outnumber pay-TV set-tops, LRG said. Among connected TV households, 74 percent have more than one device, averaging 3.3 per household, it said. Ease of use perception ranks high among connected TV households, with 74 percent of respondents giving an 8-10 ranking on a scale of 1-10, compared with 12 percent who disagreed that connected TV devices are easy to use, it said. Pay-TV households average 2.2 pay-TV boxes, the report said, and 77 percent of the TVs in pay-TV households are connected to the provider’s set-top box, it said. Across all households, the mean number of connected TV devices per household is 2.1, compared with 1.8 pay-TV set-top boxes per household, LRG said. On cable provider-supplied set-top boxes, 42 percent of subscribers agreed (8-10 ranking) the boxes' features add value to the TV service, while 16 percent disagreed, LRG said. Twenty percent of cable subscribers with pay-TV set-tops (8-10) think the boxes are a “waste of money,” while 44 percent disagreed. Other findings: 38 percent of adults with a pay-TV service watch video via a connected TV device at least weekly, compared with 48 percent of viewers who aren’t pay-TV subscribers; a third of non-4K Ultra HDTV owners have seen one in use, up from 10 percent in 2014; and 25 percent of consumers who have viewed a 4K HDTV are interested in getting one vs. 9 percent who have not watched a 4K HDTV, it said. The survey of 1,206 adults ages 18 and older in continental U.S. TV households was done in February and March.

Consumer intentions to buy TV sets jumped sharply in March from February, according to preliminary data in the Conference Board’s monthly survey. Of 5,000 consumers Nielsen canvassed through March 17 for the Conference Board, 15.7 percent said they plan to buy a TV set in the next six months, up from 13.6 percent in February and 13.5 percent in January, and up from 13.6 percent in March 2015, the Conference Board said. The March figure of 15.7 percent was the highest score for TV-buying intentions since July, when 14.5 percent of consumers canvassed said they planned to buy a TV set in the next six months. The Consumer Confidence Index, which declined in February, improved in March because consumer expectations “regarding the short term turned more favorable as last month’s turmoil in the financial markets appears to have abated,” the Conference Board said in a Tuesday announcement. “On balance, consumers do not foresee the economy gaining any significant momentum in the near-term, nor do they see it worsening.”

Following a decline in Q2 2015 and no growth in Q3, the LCD TV market in India grew 18 percent in Q4 to 2.6 million units, an IHS report said Monday. But India’s Q4 TV revenue growth was an exception among emerging-market countries: Ukraine’s LCD TV market plummeted 66 percent, Russia’s dropped 48 percent and Brazil TV revenue declined 18 percent, IHS said. India “is still early in the process of transitioning from CRT to LCD, so there is a lot of room left for market growth,” IHS analyst Hisakazu Torii said. India also has a stronger demand base than other emerging markets, Torii said. TV sales were up in India, but with a relatively small average screen size of 31.7 inches, IHS said, citing smaller home sizes than in other countries and the transition from 20-inch CRT TVs. China and the U.S. had the largest average TV screen size in Q4 at 44 inches and 43 inches, it said.

Consumer confidence toward the overall economy and tech spending rose in March, after February declines (see 1602230048), CTA said in a Wednesday report. CTA’s index of consumer expectations, which measures consumer sentiment about the U.S. economy as a whole, jumped 6.6 points in March as consumer worries about an economic downturn and the stock markets’ volatility subsided, it said. CTA’s index of consumer technology expectations, which measures consumer expectations about tech spending, increased 1.5 points in March, it said.

The cord-cutting trend dipped in Q4, with 17.5 percent of people without a pay-TV service reporting they cut cable in the past 12 months, compared with more than 19 percent answering that way in Q3, a Digitalsmiths report released Thursday said. When asked if they planned to make a change in their multichannel video programming distributor in the next 12 months, 5.6 percent of respondents said they plan to cut altogether, 6.6 percent said they plan to change providers, 2.4 percent said they plan to go with an online app or rental service, Digitalsmiths said. All those numbers were up from the Q4 2013 and Q4 2012 responses, Digitalsmiths said. Nearly 74 percent of respondents said they were interested in a la carte video packages, which is down for the fourth quarter in a row, Digitalsmiths said. The most-desired channels for stand-alone service are Discovery Channel, ABC, CBS, History and NBC, and the average price respondents want to pay for a la carte service is $40.56 per month, or $3.63 per channel per month, it said. Digitalsmiths said the growth of over-the-top offerings and skinny bundle packages is likely leading to the declining interest in a la carte MVPD offerings, though those interested still are a sizable population. Today, it said, "almost all major Pay-TV providers have a package with 50-70 channels for roughly $49 or less." The survey, done by a third party, was of 3,120 adult consumers across the U.S. and Canada.

IDC scaled back its 2016 PC shipment forecast by a “couple percent,” now projecting a 5.4 percent drop for the year to 261 million worldwide. Expectations for Q4 2015 and early 2016 were “already fairly low” due to weak economic conditions and competition from smartphones, detachable tablets and phablets, said IDC. But falling commodity prices and foreign currencies have squeezed demand further, while the ability to upgrade older PCs to Windows 10 has allowed users to delay upgrades, it said. Last year was the first since 2008 when PC shipments fell below 300 million units (see 1601130009). Despite the negative trend, "PCs remain an indispensable part of the tech landscape," said IDC analyst Loren Loverde. Ultraslim and convertible notebooks are expected to grow “substantially” by 2020, with convertibles more than doubling and ultraslim PCs growing by more than 70 percent, while all-in-one desktop volume will increase by more than a third over the same period, IDC said. Notebooks smaller than 14 inches and lower priced PCs will continue to grow, it said.