With sales of mobile devices leading the way, global consumer technology spending reached a new high of $1.07 trillion in 2013 and is expected to remain around that mark in 2014. According to the Consumer Electronics Association’s (CEA) Global Consumer Technology Trends study, smartphones are one of the top technology products owned or used. Furthermore, both smartphones and tablets are among the top five devices used to connect to the Internet in 13 countries around the globe.
When the CEA study analyzed the importance of Internet connectivity in consumer devices by country, the analysis provided results that might surprise a lot of people. Many people would assume that more consumers in the United States would consider Internet connectivity to be important. This was not the case. The importance of Internet connectivity was highest in China (89%) and Russia (87%). Upon further analysis, these results make sense, because consumers from Russia and China spend the most time on the Internet per day (4.0 and 3.9 hours respectively).
The CEO of CEA, Gary Shapiro, believes that smartphones and tablets are just the starting point for the mobile connectivity of global consumers. Consumers will continue to demand more connectivity in other forms. At the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show, innovations in wireless technology were seen in the health and fitness, automotive and home automation industries.
For a cross-market briefing related to this study, click on this link: Global Consumer Technology Trends
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Ryan Lahti is the founder and managing principal of OrgLeader, LLC. Stay up to date on Ryan’s STEM-based organization tweets here: @ryanlahti