Business Week reported today that Sony predicts it will sell upwards of 25 million HDTV sets in the upcoming fiscal year. Add that to the projected estimates from the other two major producers, LG and Samsung, and we have 85 million units in 2010. Even assuming a paltry 15 million total for the other manufacturers, and we’re looking at 100 million new HDTV sets in homes in the next year.
Extrapolating from Sony’s product line, around 10% of those units – primarily the high end models – will be internet “ready.” Almost all of them will sport at least 2 HDMI digital video inputs. Combine this with the fact that Roku is already on the market for under $100 and the Boxee Box, which owned CES earlier this year, is expected to show up in Q2 2010 at a sub $200 price.
The result? A group of people roughly one third the size of the US population is going to be looking around for quality programming and will have a nearly reasonably priced option to access the breadth of web video content without jumping through hoops or having a spare computer in the living room. It’s almost time for non geeks to start watching web video on their couch.
We’ve all known this was coming. But what the numbers say is, it may be coming very soon. To celebrate this, we’ve released the first of our commercials for Tango Echo.
