A Third of US Homes Have Smart TVs for All Their Sets: LRG

About one-third of TV households have smart TVs for all their TV sets, said a Q2 Leichtman Research Group study Friday. As of Q1, U.S. households had about 500 million connected TV (CTV) devices, up from 300 million five years ago, The tally includes streaming media boxes and sticks, connected game systems and Blu-ray players but not internet-connected pay-TV set-top boxes, which add 80 million to the total, or streaming boxes like Comcast’s Flex for internet-only customers, it said. The number of CTV devices far exceeds the number of TVs, about 330 million, in U.S. households as consumers commonly use multiple types of devices and have multiple devices connected to a set. Two-thirds of TV households have multiple types of CTV devices vs. 43% in 2017, it said, “so it is premature to prognosticate the pending demise of connected TV devices other than Smart TVs,” LRG said.