Consumers are bored with today’s tech and nervous about tomorrow’s
Accenture just launched (press release) the results of its Igniting Growth in Consumer Technology survey where it polled 28,000 consumers in 28 countries on their use of consumer technology.
Matt Rosoff of the Business Insider summarizes the results as follows:
- People are getting bored with new smartphones. Only 48% of consumers plan to buy a smartphone in the next 12 months. That’s down 6 points from last year — the first drop since Accenture started doing this survey almost a decade ago, the company’s representative Charles Hartley told me. The drop was particularly stark in China, where it went from 82% last year to only 61% this year. Of those who don’t plan to buy a new one, 47% said the main reason was because their current phone was good enough.
- They’re also bored with tablets and laptops. Similarly, the survey showed an eight-point drop in purchase intent for tablets, and a six-point drop for laptops. Overall, only 13% expected to spend more on smartphones, tablets, and laptops this year than last year. That’s compared with 33% who said they were planning to spend more in 2014 than 2013.
- Interest in new kinds of gadgets is not filling the gap. Most worryingly, interest in wearables and connected devices was flat from last year, and purchase intent is relatively low.
- A lot of people are worried about security and privacy of these new gadgets. This was perhaps the biggest surprise: The number-two reason people didn’t plan to buy one of these devices (which Accenture calls “Internet of Things” or IoT devices) was because they were worried that they would expose their personal information.
