Strategy Analytics has been designing and analysing large scale consumer surveys for many years. Some of this work has been used by our industry analysts to support their regular market and competition tracking. We have also conducted frequent consumer surveys to support proprietary project and consulting activities.

Recognising that every client has its own particular set of interests, questions and perspectives, we have now opened up some of the results of these surveys to our client base via a powerful new web-based interface and analysis tool. The ConsumerMetrix service collates the results of three years’ worth of survey results, comprising more than 15000 online consumer interviews and offering millions of unique datapoints. Survey results are easily selected and instantly available according to the needs of the individual user, and can be downloaded in Excel and Powerpoint format for incorporation into customers’ own reports.

ConsumerMetrix surveys cover the US, France, Germany, Italy and the UK. Additional international market coverage, including Canada, Spain, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, the Nordic region, Poland, Hungary, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia, is available at the request of subscribers.

Subscribers can use ConsumerMetrix to assess survey data about the world’s leading technology and service provider brands and who their current and potential customers are.

ConsumerMetrix is designed to answer key tactical, consumer-facing questions like:

·         How many people plan to buy an Xbox 360 or PS3 during the next 12 months?

·         How do nations vary in usage of digital video recorders?

·         How do the profiles of Samsung and Sony customers compare?

·         Which television service providers have the highest satisfaction ratings?

·         Which brands are people most likely to choose when they next purchase a TV, PC or mobile phone?

·         How do the demographics of Apple v. PC owners compare?

·         How many people are using the major OTT video services and which devices are they watching them on?

·         How much do consumers expect to pay for iPads or other tablets?

·         How useful do consumers find TV mobile phone apps?

·         Which consumers are using multiscreen TV?

·         How many Sky Digital customers plan to drop the service during the coming 12 months?

ConsumerMetrix covers a wide range of themes and technologies related to the digital consumer, television, video and media sectors. The outline is presented below:

We are excited by the strong interest already shown in this service, which we believe is unique in many respects. Please email digitalconsumer@strategyanalytics.com for further details and a personal demonstration.

I don’t often refer to competitors’ reports as the analyst community generally likes to maintain a friendly distance. But Canalys’ announcement that tablets should be counted as PCs pretty much forces a reaction.

Canalys appears to be taking a technology-based approach to segmentation. So the fact that tablets have fast processors, can run productivity applications, offer email, and can access the internet, puts them in the same category as PCs, which also do these things. The absence of a keyboard, and the presence of a touch screen, are seen merely as customer options, just as one might specify a blu-ray disc drive or extra memory.

Canalys concludes that the “PC” market is therefore doing extremely well at the moment, largely because of the success of the tablet category.

Segmentation arguments are one of the many joys of industry analysis. Lines are invariably blurred, definitions hazy and perspectives inevitably conflicting. Market forecast buyers must always ensure they understand what is and is not included in any given segment, as this is often a key reason for variations in market estimates from one source to another.

But in spite of these challenges, Canalys seems to be stretching things just a little too far on this occasion. If we want to count the market for “computing devices”, fair enough. Let’s bundle in desktops, notebooks, netbooks, tablets, MIDs, smartphones, and a fair few TV set-top boxes and other devices as well while we are at it. They all offer a similar combination of technical functions, though each is clearly better suited to some more than others.

However precise we try to be about technology or functional definitions, sooner or later, we also have to consider user perceptions. If it surfs like a tablet, plays games like a tablet, and stimulates envy like a tablet, it probably is a tablet. And no amount of ivory tower contemplation will persuade Apple’s iPad customers they have bought a “PC”, however much Microsoft and Intel might wish they had.

Good luck with this one, my friends - you are going to need it.

David Mercer

Kent Displays is not a name which will immediately bring recognition to consumer electronics industry veterans, but it’s one to watch out for. The company, based in Kent, Ohio, makes a unique and patented variant of LCD displays, Reflex™, and after many years of trying different professional applications finally came out with its consumer-oriented Boogie Board towards the end of 2010. According to CEO Albert Green, the company’s initial sales projections of “a few thousand” were vastly exceeded, with several hundred thousand sold in the run up to Christmas. Boogie Boards were available at $39.99 in Brookstone stores if you were lucky enough to find one. Sales will exceed one million this year. What are they? Basically they are small, very light, notepads, and require no power to retain the image since they use reflected light. The image can be erased instantly and this function requires a small 3V watch battery. The writing experience truly is very similar to paper, in fact in many ways it is much better. When the company adds local storage in future iterations, this will become a powerful, simple, low cost and easy-to-use notepad which could synch directly to a PC or smart device for further processing. I can’t wait to get my hands on one before next year’s CES. David Mercer