The move to digital television will be driven by high-definition TV (HDTV) a study has found -- Picture quality is the most important factor in persuading Europeans to ditch their analogue sets, the survey from Jupiter Research finds. It had been assumed that services such as video-on-demand and digital video recorders - that allow users to rewind and pause television programmes - would be the most important factors. But only 10 percent cited these as reasons. Nearly a quarter -- 24 percent -- ranked HDTV as the most important factor in deciding whether to switch to digital television. In terms of existing digital TV penetration, the UK market is the most sophisticated in Europe. Around 60 percent of UK households have already made the switch to digital TV.
Every executive who has approved a connected product roadmap has made a quiet assumption: the network underneath it will still be there. That assumption is about to be tested at a scale the automotive industry has never faced. The global connected vehicle installed base is heading toward a billion units, and the cellular technology most of those vehicles depend on is scheduled to begin its retirement before the end of the decade. For automakers, fleet operators, insurers, and the telecom carriers that serve them, the question is whether the recurring revenue those services promise can survive a connectivity layer with a shorter life than the vehicle carrying it. How Scale Meets an Expiry Date Omdia research forecasts that the global connected vehicle installed base will surpass 1.05 billion units by 2035, up from 473.7 million in 2025. Few installed bases of any kind more than double in a decade, and this one signals that connectivity is moving from premium differentiator to baseline e...