• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer, August 18, 2005

The recent Forrester report, "The State Of Consumers And Technology: Benchmark 2005," from more than 68,000 North American households and combined with data from the seven previous years, shows by 2010, 62 percent of US households will have broadband access to the Internet, 53 percent will own a laptop, and 37 percent will use a digital video recorder (DVR) to gain control over how and when they watch TV.

Forrester Research Vice President Ted Schadler, says “The rise of consumers' adoption of personal devices, home networking, and  broadband, combined with the increasing importance of the Internet in media, retail, banking, and healthcare, means that every consumer-facing industry  must …(recognize) that consumers' attitudes toward  technology determine a lot about how they receive marketing messages, get  service online, adopt new technologies, and spend their time."

Sample data  points include:

• Twenty-nine percent of North American households connected to the Internet using broadband connections in 2004, up from 19 percent in 2003. 
• Broadband access will more than double this decade, reaching 71 million US households in 2010.
• Surfing the Internet while watching TV, shopping in the kitchen, and listening to digital music in the living room will drive home networking  adoption to 46.5 million households by 2010. 

Today, only six percent of online consumers read blogs and two percent use RSS, while 70 percent of online consumers use the Internet to research products for purchase. Marketers should focus on identifying the early  adopting tech optimists, concludes the report, to tap effective viral marketing  opportunities. 

In the past three months:

• 43 percent of US online households banked online,
• 41 percent checked their account balances online
• 24 percent transferred  balances online.

In 2004, 39.5 million US households shopped online -- 3.5 million more than  in 2003. Broadband, laptop, and home networking adoption will help drive online research and purchasing to more than 55 million households by 2010.  

Please go here for more information about the report.