Forrester: Household tech industry thriving

BOSTON - Household usage of technology will continue to gain steam in North America over the next five years, Forrester Research Inc. reported on Tuesday after completing a survey of 68,000 people.

"The State of Consumers and Technology: Benchmark 2005" quizzed consumers on how they acquire and utilize consumer electronics, computers and the Internet. Billed as the largest report of its kind, the Forrester survey examined planned use of products and technologies ranging from online banking to satellite television. It also included respondents' economic demographics and their attitudes toward technology -- whether or not people were "tech optimists" or "tech pessimists.".

Forrester has been performing a similar survey for seven years, and past data was included in the report. Many of the devices and technologies that Forrester quizzed consumers on didn't exist when the surveys began.

Forrester saw an increase in households using broadband Internet access -- 19 percent in 2003 to 29 percent in 2004 -- and predicted that the number of North American broadband users will reach 71 million by the end of the decade.

Broadband was not the only area that exhibited high growth. The percentage of households using a home computer network is set to nearly quadruple in the next five years, to 46.5 percent. Also, the percentage of households using digital video recorders should exhibit a similar increase, from 10 percent this year to a projected 42.7 percent in 2010, Forrester said.

The greatest increases in popularity from 2000 to 2010 will be for DVD players, camera phones and digital cameras, the study said. The surveyed devices exhibiting least growth are the personal digital assistant and the video game console, the market shares of which will only grow from 18.2 percent to 31.9 percent and 40.9 percent to 48.8 percent, respectively.

Forrester found attitudes toward technology among consumers almost evenly split, with 49 percent of all households rated as optimists and 51 percent as pessimists. The company pointed out that marketing to pessimistic consumers -- those that have little faith in or use for technology -- is quite different from marketing to optimistic technophiles.

The research company also broke out tech optimists and pessimists on a state-by-state basis. Residents of Utah and Washington, D.C. considered themselves the most technology friendly, with 59 percent rated as optimists in each locale. The most tech averse state? West Virginia, where only 39 percent of residents consider themselves tech optimists.