Smart TV adoption has grown over the last few years, and will most likely reach saturation one day. But we’re not quite there yet. After all, there’s no real good reason for buying a brand new TV, only for it to require purchasing another accessory or dongle in order to stream your subscription services.
That’s why the majority of TV sets are now Smart TVs, according to a recent report by Hub Research. That percentage has risen from 45% in 2020 fo 57% in 2022.
In addition, three quarters (76%) of TV households say they own a smart TV, up from 70% a year ago. But not everyone is utilizing their Smart TV’s full potential. In the past, Smart TV owners have simply plugged them into cable boxes or external streaming devices, not even bothering to use their TV’s built-in smart capabilities, which seems like a complete waste and defeats the purpose of owning a Smart TV.
But in 2022, more than four in five (86%) smart TV homes regularly stream shows through a smart TV’s built-in capability, a big jump from the 75% in 2020.
But while most people are using Smart TVs correctly, there’s still 1 in 7 (14%) of homes that own Smart TV but aren’t using them to stream TV or movies.
“Growth in smart TV viewing over the past few years has been supercharged not just by more smart TVs, but greatly increased use of smart TV apps for streaming,” said David Tice, senior consultant to Hub and co-author of the study. “It has been a long road to get a large majority of smart TV owners to use those sets for streaming. This is a theme for smart tech overall: it’s not just getting devices into homes, but how can stakeholders get consumers to use the full capabilities of smart devices?”
Smart TVs are the most popular “Smart” device in U.S. homes overall, but now about half of households own other smart devices. 52% of all homes own a smart speaker (Amazon Echo, Google Nest, etc.) and 48% own at least one smart home device like a smart thermostat, smart doorbell, or smart lightbulb.