A product marketing
executive recently told me only around 25 percent of respondents in a product
focus group acknowledged they had at some point streamed video.
Yet, nearly 90
percent of this same group also acknowledged to being Netflix users.
Oops.
This disconnect
between the technology and the product is poisoning several businesses as
technology companies try to convince Mom & Pop America to invest in home networks
and wield Internet TV scissors to cut the hated cable cord.
For instance,
connected TVs will account for a majority of HDTVs sold in a few years, yet the
actual connect rate – jacking these connected TVs to the Internet once a
consumer mounts it in their living room – is only around 20 percent.
Perhaps the most poisoned
product is the media streamer.
Despite the high
profile of such brand names as Roku, Boxee and even Apple, sales of streamers
aren't exactly scintillating. Roku, which introduced its first media streamer
almost exactly four years ago, has sold maybe 3 million total units of all its
varying models. Western Digital has sold maybe a million units of its WD TV Live
boxes. And Apple, which considers its Apple TV STB a hobby, is actually the
market leader with around 5 million sold.
No other media
streamer in the U.S. has sold as many as half a million units.
Granted, media
streamers are a relatively new business. But media streamers are likely to
remain a niche business if their makers can't figure out a way to quickly communicate
what the hell they do and how to connect them.
What's a router?
Home Internet
connectivity beyond the home office (which is usually set-up by a cable service
technician) is a mystery to the majority of Americans, wireless connectivity
especially. Understanding the difference between cellular wireless and Wi-Fi is
a real issue, not helped by the varying Wi-Fi router standards – b, g, n, N450,
N900 and now ac. All this is hard enough for consumers to deal with without confronting
the jargon-filled set-up mine field consisting of SSID, WPA key, et al.
Even if a consumer
has a passing familiarity with Wi-Fi, that same consumer spying a media server
on a big box retailer shelf is likely to bypass it since they have no idea from
the packaging what the damn thing is or what it does.
These are all tech ignorance
issues that we in our high-tech bubble are shockingly blind to.
Media streamers also face
hurdles from competing products. The most popular media streamer is not a media
streamer at all – it's the video game console. Around 70 million PS3s and Xbox 360s,
each equipped with a panoply of media streaming content sources as most media
streamers, have been sold in the U.S.
Plus, all Blu-ray
players are connectable if the consumer has the connection wherewithal, and
more than three-quarters of them are equipped with Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, Amazon
Prime and many of the other usual media streamer suspects.
Do media streams have
a future? Of course. There are plenty of households with broadband connectivity
but lacking a connected HDTV, lacking a videogame console and lacking a Blu-ray
player.
All the media
streamer makers have to do is figure out how to better communicate what it is
their boxes do, why a consumer should want one and how to easily connect them.
