This is the second of five articles derived from McKinsey’s iConsumer survey, an annual survey that tracks changing consumer behavior for different digital experiences.
Convergence is the fission of the tech world—the day, always a little in the future, when all kinds of media and content will converge on a single, ubiquitous platform. But reality has proved stubborn.
Consider television. This is an old-school device, to be sure, but the last few years have seen the biggest change in TV since the advent of cable—the ability to watch TV programming without a TV. But as McKinsey’s recent survey of 5,000 people in the US, Britain, Germany, Spain, Korean and Japan indicates, there is no convergence about how people are watching and on what.
Spaniards, for example, spend 13 minutes a day watching over-the-top (OTT) video, more than six times as much as the Japanese (2 minutes). More than half of Koreans prefer to watch OTT content on TV-connected PCs, compared to only 13% of Americans, the lion’s share of whom watch their OTT content on gaming consoles, the choice of only 12% of Japanese. On the larger issue, only 15% of Germans and 19% of British watch TV over the Internet at all, compared to 45% of Koreans.
For businesses in the industry, then, this is a good moment to pause and reflect—on what trends the leaders are establishing; on how to react to the inevitable disruptions; and on how to coax profits from the vortex.
To see the results of the study, download the PDF.