3D movies such as Avatar may be all the rage, but enthusiasm for the relatively nascent medium has yet to significantly accelerate mainstream adoption of 3D-enabled television sets.
Indeed, iSuppli principal analyst Riddhi Patel told TG Daily that despite “aggressive promotions” from the industry, the 3D TV market in 2010 will likely be limited to a small pool of enthusiastic early adopters.
However, Internet-Enabled TV (IETV) is expected to kick off its mainstream debut this year.
“This is because 3-D is still dealing with a number of barriers, including cost, content availability and interoperability,” explained Patel.
“[Meanwhile], IETV provides immediate benefits by allowing TV viewers to access a range of content readily available on the Internet.”
Patel also noted that TV sets with built-in Internet capability will amount to a respectable 27.7 million units in 2010.
In contrast, 3D set shipments are expected to total only 4.2 million this year.
“With IETV, viewers can connect to the Internet at all times by using their TV’s built-in feature, bypassing the need for a bridge device such as a set-top box, game console or Internet media adapter like Apple Inc.’s TV console.
“Such connectivity allows viewers to access content from a wide spectrum of providers — ranging from movie [vendors] like Netflix and Amazon, to content aggregators such as Hulu, to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.”
