Punters to favour Smart TV over 3D TV

Telly buyers are keener on Smart TV tech than they are on 3D, but both features are going to be taken up more enthusiastically than televisions in general over the next three years.

So says market watcher the Topology Research Institute, which reckons 52.9m Smart TVs - televisions with internet access for IPTV services and the ability to download and run basic apps - will ship next year, compared to 48.2m 3D TVs.

Many of the sets that ship will, of course, feature both technologies, and both types of set are part of the 258.2m tellies that will leave manufacturers' factories in 2012.

That's up from 250.4m in 2011, a year-on-year increase of 3.1 per cent. Growth will accelerate through 2014, Topology forecast, with shipments increasing 4.1 per cent in 2013 and 4.9 per cent in 2014.

Compare that to a 41.2 per cent increase in Smart TV shipments between 2013 and 2012, and then 66.2 per cent between 2013 and 2014.

By contrast, growth in 3D TV shipments for those two periods will be 78.2 per cent then 32.2 per cent, Topology reckons. But 3D TV unit shipments will not exceed those of Smart TVs.

Expect the market to form a three-way split, with Samsung on one branch, Google-favouring vendors like Sony on another, and the third supporting companies who prefer technology built on open standards - think HbbTV, CE-HTML and HTML 5 - such as Philips, LG and Sharp. ®