Rear-Seat Entertainment Docking or Streaming Not So Dedicated

While in the car, passengers and drivers are consuming infotainment in new ways. Rather than embedded devices and services, automotive consumers are increasingly reliant on a myriad of portable, connected, and streaming sources. A new report from the In-vehicle UX (IVX) group at Strategy Analytics “Strong Shift Towards Brought-In and Streamed Content for Rear Seat Entertainment“, surveying consumers in the US, Western Europe and China regarding their interest in and willingness to pay for rear-seat entertainment systems, has found that this trend has now fully extended to rear-seat entertainment. In key demographics, the majority of consumers are no longer interested in disc players, but rather ports which will allow them to stream content in the car through a brought-in device or dedicated service.

Key report findings include:

  • Consumer interest in rear-seat entertainment has remained consistent in Western Europe and China since 2015.
  • Of those consumers interested, a there has been a dramatic shift from DVD and/or Blu-Ray players to preference for tablet docking stations and streaming video.
  • Willingness to pay for rear-seat entertainment systems is modest across all reasonable price points in all regions.

“One key question product line managers must address in the short term is how this trend will affect desirability for dedicated screens. Although these systems were tremendous value-additions for many years, and will remain so for the immediate future, consumers’ expectations for rear-seat entertainment no longer require a dedicated seat-back screen,” said Monica Wong, report author.

“Though screens will remain desirable for the near term, the ability to stow or hide them will become increasingly important as well; particularly if smart surfaces become capable of accomplishing the same task,” said Chris Schreiner, Director, Syndicated Research UXIP, “