Two new reports offer a noteworthy snapshot of American households’ changing electronic priorities.
The first study, released last week by The Nielsen Company, revealed that almost one-fifth of households do not have a landline. According to the report, more than 20 million telephone households in the United States – or 17 percent of the total – now rely solely on wireless telephone service instead.
The analysts said their research “suggests that one in five U.S. households could be wireless-only by the end of 2008.”
According to Nielsen, smaller households and lower-income households are more likely to drop their landline, which cost $40 per month per landline household on average. The study found that more than half of wireless-only homes have household incomes of $40,000 or less.
The analysts also found that 31 percent of those who dropped their landlines had moved prior to doing so, and 22 percent had changed jobs. However, the study also found that 10 percent of households that still have a landline had experimented with going wireless-only and then switched back, usually because they needed one for another service, such as a security system, satellite TV or fax machine.
Alison LeBreton, vice president of client services for Nielsen Mobile, said that dropping landline phone service could be just the start.
“As wireless data networks improve and speeds become more and more competitive with broadband, some consumers may cut the Internet cord, as well, favoring wireless data cards and other access through carrier networks,” LeBreton said in a news release.
A second report released last week, this one from the Leichtman Research Group, found that 27 percent of U.S. households now have at least one Digital Video Recorder (DVR) machine. In addition, nearly one-third of households with a DVR have more than one.
The survey also found that 35 percent of DVR owners now watch more programs recorded on their DVRs than they do regularly-scheduled programs.
“The number of U.S. households with DVRs has essentially doubled in the past two years, and – with a continued push from cable, DBS and Telco TV providers – will likely double again over the next four years,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group Inc., said in a news release.
Leichtman forecasts that the share of TV viewing time in the U.S. devoted to watching programs on DVRs or on-demand services will more than double between now and the end of 2012, from 6 percent to 16 percent.
