Apps on the TV: still a pipe dream

Since the advent of the mobile app store, consumer electronics companies have been trying to port that same app-using experience over to the television screen, with notable attempts being made by search engines Yahoo and Google with Yahoo Widgets and Google TV. According to recent figures by market research company In-Stat, a vibrant TV-based app environment is still just a pipe dream.

In-Stat, now a subsidiary of NPD Group, has published its second-quarter view of the digital entertainment ecosystem, and the app model is a very long way from being mainstream among TV viewers.

According to the group, only 22% of all broadband connected households have an HDTV with integrated app capabilities, and even then, only 60% of those households use a single TV-based app each week.

"As expected, Netflix and YouTube currently dominate the TV application space," In-Stat Research Director Keith Nissen said in a statement. "But as Netflix competitors become more numerous and as applications are optimized for the big screen, TV apps will become part of the mainstream TV viewing experience."

TV market research by Nielsen in the first quarter of 2011 found that the number of cable and satellite TV households that lacked broadband access actually dropped 8.6% from 28 million to 25.6 million, while the incidence of broadband access in homes with cable/satellite TV subscriptions grew 5% from 74.8 million to 78.5 million, so there is a definite move toward households having both subscription television and broadband access.

However, if we use Nielsen's numbers with In-Stat's percentages, that means 17.27 million homes have HDTVs that support apps, and 10.32 million of them actually use the TV-based app functionality once a week.

Nielsen says the total number of TV viewing households in the US in the first quarter of 2011 was 115.7 million, so overall, only 8.9% of all TV viewing households are using TV-based apps.

Adoption of new TV technology is indeed a slow process. As of June 2011, for example, 40.2 million TV viewers were still using a standard definition set, and ATSC HDTV launched nearly 13 years ago.