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How smart is a ‘Smart TV’? Study suggests, not much; at least not smart enough to entice the users with its ‘smart’ capabilities. While people are supposed to use the apps bundled with Smart TVs, we have found a very interesting finding that consumers are avoiding most apps like Facebook, Skype, Angry Birds on Smart TVs. What’s the mystery?

Smart TVs comes with pre-loaded and downloadable apps for video streaming, games, social networking, etc. Users are supposed to glue with these amazing apps due to their features and many more options. But research organization NPD Group has discovered that the majority of Americans who own Smart TVs simply don’t utilize the applications except streaming video and music.

According to NPD analysts’ estimation there are around 25 million households with smart televisions in the United States. See what they do with their TVs –

• Approximately six out of every ten smart TV owners use their smart TV to watch Over-the-Top (OTT) video services like Netflix and Hulu Plus.
• Only 10 percent of smart TV owners surf Internet through a browser displayed on their television screen.
• Nearly 15 percent of Smart TV owners utilize their TV for listening to Over-the-Top music services like Pandora.
• Around 8 percent of Smart TV owners usually visit the giant social network Facebook through their television (It indicates that people prefer to use Facebook through tablet, smartphone or some other device.
• People avoid reading books or magazines, accessing maps for directions, posting videos to services like YouTube, calling friends or family over Skype, uploading pictures to services like Flickr, online shopping, playing casual games like Angry Birds, checking out files on a home network through Smart TVs.
• Due to dedicated video streaming hardware like the Roku set-top box, Apple TV, Blu-ray players, DVRs and gaming consoles that offer the same applications like Smart TVs, people are backing off to experience the features through Smart TVs.
• Consumers are ignoring smart TV applications because of having the capability to stream content from a smartphone or tablet to a TV.

Have a look at the below image describing the usage of apps through TV.

NPD Group’s Connected Intelligence Director John Buffone said, “This is yet another challenge to the uniqueness of any one TV OEM’s device offering, especially as the throwing technology may also be driven by peripheral devices such as the Xbox. Indeed, the whole peripheral option, combined with emerging technology on specific OEM devices can lead to a host of complexities for consumers. Taking the “throwing,” screen-sharing concept as an example, there are multiple options emerging in the market, such as the Xbox SmartGlass, Samsung AllShare, Apple AirPlay, and many other DLNA variants.”

The whole scenario hints that TV manufacturers should work on simplifying the user experience in regard to find content rather than attempting to compete with the volume of content options from other sources.

Source: NPD Group (Blog)
Thanks To: Digital Trends

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