PCs – Page 12 – MetaFacts' TUP findings

December 7, 2004January 15, 2021

Rich PC, Poor PC–They Lead (Somewhat) Different Lives [TUPdate]

The rich are different from you and me-they order a lot more photo prints online. The upper crust (well, those who make above $50,000 yearly) are also far more likely to purchase consumer services, perform video editing, work with numbers, and use financial services. But the other half (i.e., those who make less than $50,000) are more likely to use their PCs for VoIP, and to watch DVDs.

Why is this important?

It misses the mark to assume that only the highest-income households are early adopters, simply because they have more disposable income. Saving money is a key driving factor for some products among those with less to spend. At the same time, assuming that money-saving benefits will cross the income divide to attract those with higher-incomes also misses the mark.

These are other insights came to light when 10,418 households-broken down by income-responded to the Technology User Profile survey from MetaFacts about what activities they regularly use their PCs for. The result: rich or poor, nearly everyone (averaging 89 percent) uses their PC for e-mail, and hardly anyone (averaging only 3.3 percent) uses their PC to watch TV. But between those two extremes, there are some important differences and interesting wrinkles.

In terms of how the high-end PC users differ from the low end, the big differentiator is the practice of obtaining prints from online photo services—15.5 percent of the upper crust do it, compared to 8.6 percent of the low end. Evidently the rich are not only more likely to own and use digital cameras, but they want glossy hardcopies to show around.

Meanwhile, using the PC to purchase consumer services online is more popular with people with more money, but involves a divide that is not quite as steep: 28.1 percent of the upper crust does it, as opposed to 16.5 percent of the lower crust. The same holds true for using the PC to work with numbers, with 32.1 percent of the high-end doing it as opposed to 19.5 percent of the low end. Apparently the rich have more numbers to crunch-but the poor have some, too. The situation was similar when it came to accessing financial services, with 37.6 percent of the high end doing it compared to 25.5 percent of the low end.As for video editing, the rich/poor divide was stark-but hard to get excited about because the total numbers are so small. Only 5.4 percent of the high-end use their PCs for video editing, compared to 3.3 percent of the low end. Those who said that people were not going to spend their days at the office working at a PC in order to rush home to spend the evening at a PC editing family videos were correct.

There are, meanwhile, areas where low end users outshine high-end users. When it comes to using the PC to make phone calls via Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), those with less money employ this money-saving technology 9 percent of the time, compared to 6.6 percent of high-end users. And when it comes to using their PCs to watch movies on DVD (and thus avoid buying a separate DVD player) 12.7 percent of the low-end users report doing it, compared to 11.2 percent of the high-end users. While these are not huge figures, they do indicate that early adopters can be found at all economic strata. And, since the percentages cover the national user base, the figures should not be dismissed-if nine percent of low-end households are making use of VoIP, that’s almost five million households that have found a way to use their available technology to side-step the phone company and save some money.

In case you were wondering, there are instances where the high-end and low-end uses exactly coincide. When it comes to hobbies, about 35 percent of both strata use their PC. When it comes to calendar management, 17.5 percent use it on both sides of the divide. Differences are statistically insignificant when it comes to educational activities for adults (averaging 20.1 percent) and for children (averaging 20.8 percent) and for downloading music (averaging 30.2 percent.) If it’s true that there are things that money can’t buy, it also appears to be true that there are activities that money has little impact on.

December 1, 2004January 15, 2021

Average American Means PC Ownership , Internet Connection…Almost [TUPdate]

Almost three-fifths of American households own a PC, and nearly all of those households have some kind of Internet connectivity. However, the rate of broadband Internet use is much lower-about 27 percent of American homes have such a connection, or 46 percent of PC owners. The flip side is that there are still tens of millions of Americans who have never owned a PC. Furthermore, some groups of Americans have less than half the adoption rate of other Americans.

Why is this important?

Anyone that believes that all Americans are home computer users with fast, broadband Internet connections are just barely a quarter right. More importantly, there is a persistent gap between the connected and disconnected, with some market segments having five times the adoption rate of others.

These are some of the insights culled from the latest research undertaken by MetaFacts, Inc., based on responses to questionnaires submitted by 32,130 U.S. households. The responses showed that about 58 percent of U.S. homes own a PC, representing 64.3 million households. The most likely to own a computer are the affluent empty nesters and older SINKs (single income no kids), whose rate is 25 percent higher than average. The least likely are the single heads of households who are 75 or older; whose rate is 40 percent less than average. But, interestingly, almost all other groups are within 15 percent of the norm for the general population.

The rate of Internet connectivity (of any kind) is 57 percent, or only one point lower than the rate of PC ownership. Apparently, if they are going to have a PC, they are going to connect it. In all groups the rate of Internet connectivity is within a few points of the rate of PC ownership.

However, the same cannot be said of broadband Internet connections. Only 27 percent of households have one (although this still amounts to almost 30 million subscribers) and the adoption rate varies considerably among various groups. Unsurprisingly, affluent, traditional families are the most likely to have a broadband Internet connection. In fact, they are 53 percent more likely than the average American household to have it. They are closely followed by affluent, young singles; affluent empty nesters and older SINKs; DINKs (double income no kids); working parents; and younger, mid-income empty nesters.

The least likely to have a broadband connection are single heads of households who are 75 or older. Their rate of connection is about a third of the average. Married heads of households who are 75 and older follow next, but are nearly half the average, as are single active seniors, plus middle-income older singles. The next tier are the married active seniors, who are connected at about three-fourths the average rate. Most of the other classifications clustered around the average.

Meanwhile, there are still pockets of resistance to the computer revolution, especially among the aged. Single heads of household who are more than 75 years old are twice as likely as average to report no PC usage. That might seem like a niche, but it’s still 2.7 million households. The next group that is least likely to use a PC are the married heads of households who are at least 75-but they are only about a third more likely than average to be non-users. Older, mid- to low-income singles and single active seniors are in that same tier as well. (The least likely to not use a PC are affluent singles, regardless of age.) The scattered resistance is enough to add up to 35 million households without a PC-a significant market, but since they are committed non-users the question is whether they are a viable market.

November 8, 2004January 15, 2021

TUPdates: Home Office Joins Mom and Apple Pie As American Institutions

Forget recipes and menu management-Americans don’t keep their PCs in the kitchen. Basically, if they have one at home, they are very likely to have a home office-or make a corner of the bedroom serve that purpose. But however they’re laid out, it’s clear that American home offices represent a huge market. Meanwhile, road warrioring is a niche practice as far as home PC users are concerned. As for cybercafés, it appears that PC users are more likely to go there for the coffee.

These and other insights are derived from the latest research carried out by MetaFacts, Inc., and involved responses from 10,418 households. Respondents were asked where they used their family computer, their workplace computer, and their self-employed computer.

This is important because which room of the house home computers are used in can influence everything from their color, shape, size and overall industrial design to the peripherals and entertainment devices they might be connected to. It also helps more clearly define the market potential for wireless networks and consumer electronics that could interact to share music, video, graphics within the household yet not only within the same room.

Unsurprisingly, 98.8 percent of family PCs saw use in the home-but what’s probably more interesting is that the installed base amounts to 118.9 million machines. Of these, 41.5 percent are situated in a home office, representing a staggering 56.8 million machines. As for the rest of the home PCs, 18.8 percent in the living room, 16.8 percent in the bedroom, 25 percent in some other room (den, anyone?), and only 4.5 percent in the kitchen. Data and carrots evidently just don’t mix.

When examined in relationship to other factors, it appears that having a broadband internet connection in the home raised the incidence of a home office to 49 percent, mostly at the expense of the bedroom and other-room PCs. Only 33.1 percent of households with incomes under $50,000 yearly reported using PCs in a home office. Probably because more pressing uses could be found for a given room, the presence of children in the home also kept the rate of home offices down, although not as much as income levels.

But regardless of what room it was in, the home PC tended to stay at home. Less than one percent of the respondents reported using their home PCs in a car or other transportation, or in a hotel. But the use of workplace PCs in those settings was in the 4-5 percent range. Both home and workplace PCs were used in libraries at a rate between one and two percent, and both saw less than one percent use in coffee shops and copy shops, indicating these venues are likely to remain niche uses. As for cybercafés, they don’t seem to be becoming part of the landscape for PC users. The use for workplace machines in cybercafés among those using a home-owned, employer-owned or self-employment owned computer rose from .1 percent last year to .6 percent this year, but the rate for home PCs fell from .3 to .1 percent.

Publicly shared computers – such as in libraries, cybercafés, churches and kiosks – are mostly among those already with access to a computer. Based on the screener for Technology User Profile 2004 with 32,130 respondents, 25.1% of households with a user of one of these public computers don’t have access to a computer at home, their workplace or through self-employment. The majority – 74.9% – already have access elsewhere.

Incidentally, about 13.4 percent of workplace PCs saw use in the home. About half of these ended up in the home office and the rest in other rooms-although in this case the kitchen proved more popular than the bedroom. Evidently, people these days take work home in their laptops instead of their briefcases. Employers who have not come to terms with the fact need to wake up and smell the coffee-like the 2.1 percent of their machines that are being used in the kitchen.

Another 13.6 million machines were reported in use by the self-employed. Their rate of having home offices-36 percent-was a little lower than the home PC rate, but some of their workplace PCs were likely to have been in rooms that anyone else would call a home office. Interestingly, self-employed PCs saw more use on the road and in public places than home or workplace PCs, and that might represent an untapped niche for marketers.