Web-connected TVs, Blu-ray players surge
60% of U.S. households will have home networks in 2013
By Danny King -- Video Business, 6/2/2009
JUNE 2 | PHYSICAL: Annual sales of both Web-connected high-definition televisions and Internet-enabled Blu-ray Disc players will jump about tenfold by 2013, when about 60% of U.S. households will have home-entertainment networks, according to a report released yesterday.
Web-enabled TVs sold 200,000 units in 2008, which was less than half of sales of Web-connected Blu-ray players. But Boston-based research firm Yankee Group predicts sales of Web-enabled TVs will overtake Blu-ray players, jumping to about 6 million this year and surge to about 50 million in 2013. Web-connected Blu-ray sales, estimated to be 3 million this year, will climb to about 30 million within four years.
The jump in Web-connected home-entertainment components reflects both falling TV and Blu-ray prices as well as an expanding amount of TV and film content available for either downloading or video-streaming from such companies as Netflix, Blockbuster and Amazon.com. With such demand for connected products, sales are likely to accelerate early next year, according to Josh Martin, senior analyst with Yankee Group.
“You’re going to sell off your remaining (non-connected) inventory by Super Bowl 2010,” Martin said. “After that, you will have eliminated products that are disconnected.”
The increase also parallels a jump in Web-to-television consumer spending forecasted by industry analysts over the next few years.
Consumers will spend about $2.9 billion on video content that’s streamed from the Internet to TVs in 2013, up from about $600 million this year, research firm In-Stat said in a report last month. By 2013, about 24 million broadband-connected households will regularly watch online videos on their TVs, up from about 2.5 million this year, according to In-Stat, which is a sister company of Video Business.
