Ericsson study: Tablet PC-TV connection interests consumers

Less than six months into a tablet PC revival led by the Apple iPad, new research from Ericsson ConsumerLab shows that almost 40% of consumers worldwide may be interested in applications employing tablet PCs as TV remote controls and content navigators.

That’s just one of the findings in a study released by Ericsson this week, which cast a global net on TV viewing habits. Consumers in seven countries, including the U.S., the U.K., China, Germany, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan, were interviewed, comprising a sample size representing 336 million TV viewers worldwide, according to Ericsson ConsumerLab.

Of the international sampling, 37% were found to be “very interested in a touch-screen tablet connected to their TV,” the study said, a finding which comes as service providers such as Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Cablevision Systems and Time Warner Cable, among others, have begun to test and plan tablet PC apps for their traditional TV or TV Everywhere services.

The research also found that 93% of respondents still watch linear broadcast TV content, which may be reassuring to service providers and broadcast content owners as they continue to hear news of the ongoing explosive growth in online TV viewing.

But another finding from the study casts that figure in a different light: About 70% of that same group said they watch the broadcast content after it has been streamed, downloaded or recorded from its original source. About 45% of them actually watch TV content streamed online. That lends more credence to the notion that time-shifted or place-shifted viewing now dominates TV viewing.

The research also gauged consumer interest in having TVs and PCs connected to one another. About 70% of those who have already interconnected the two devices wanted to do so simply to show content coming from the PC on a larger screen. Just 15% said they actually wanted to use their TVs to navigate Internet content coming through the PC.