i3 - March/April 2016 - 11

Tech

TOP TEN CONSUMER CONNECTED DEVICES BY UNIT SALES
1

Smartphones

Tablets

Netbooks and Notebooks

Smart TVs

Video Game Consoles

Consumer Printers

Digital Media Players

Smartwatches

Desktop PCs

10 E-readers
"Digital media players" in this category are networked devices that play Internet video
services; examples include Roku and AppleTV.
Ranked by Units Shipped. Analysis based on CTA's CT Sales and Forecasts, 2015

Of the top
10 most
popular
categories
of consumer
devices,

Antonis Liokouras/Thinkstock

84.3
percent of
units sold
are IPv6enabled.

C TA . t e c h / i 3

YouTube on a T-Mobile phone, you are using IPv6.
All the major tablets and mobile PCs also support IPv6. Why? The answer is that the major
operating systems support IPv6. Microsoft, Apple
and Google include IPv6 support for their operating systems. Linux is enabled as well.
Next up at number four is the smart TV. Here
the story hits a rough spot. Smart TV manufacturers are beginning to test IPv6 but few implementations are seen "in the wild." Hard numbers are not
available, but there appear to be a small percentage
of smart TVs that are dual-stack. For the purposes
of this study, we used zero percent. However, this
should increase next year based on developments
in the industry and disclosure from companies supporting the feature.
For video game consoles, Microsoft's addition of
IPv6 capability to the Xbox One makes that device
the first major game console to adopt the modern
system. In consumer printers-number six on the
list-HP, Canon, Brother and Lexmark are IPv6
enabled. These four account for about 76 percent of
the U.S. home printer market by unit sales.
Category number seven is "Digital Media Players,"
or streaming media devices, where the largest sellers
were players like Roku, Chromecast, AppleTV and

Amazon Fire. Parks Associates forecast more than
25 percent of U.S. households would have a streaming media player by 2015. AppleTV and Chromecast
support IPv6. According to Amazon technical support, Amazon Fire does not support IPv6; nor does
Roku.
In the next two categories are smartwatches and
desktop PCs. Currently most smartwatches use a
fairly recent version of Bluetooth, but not the version implementing IPv6. Desktop PCs, on the other
hand, are in the same class as smartphones, tablets
and mobile PCs: IPv6 (dual-stack) is supported by
the operating system by default.
In the final category are e-readers. The Amazon Kindle supports IPv6 (as of Kindle 3). The
Barnes & Noble Nook series may or may not. B&N
preferred not to disclose this level of technical
information. Tablet-based e-readers are considered
under "tablets."
Between the information above, and the Consumer Technology Association's MarketMetrics
sales data, it's possible to answer the question,
"How is consumer IPv6 deployment going?"
Where there was any uncertainty, this study used
the most conservative approach. So when it was
not possible to definitively answer the question
of IPv6 support, we counted this as equivalent to
"no IPv6 support," even if there was a reasonable
chance the product did support the feature.
For the final result, we estimate that of the top
10 most popular categories of consumer devices,
84.3 percent of units sold are IPv6 enabled and at
least 78.1 percent of the "top 20" products have this
feature.
The Internet continues to grow, but the IPv4
address pool is empty. As a result, ISPs are forced
to use workarounds to provide new service to consumers. These "transition technologies" will likely
increasingly challenge the performance and reliability of IPv4-only connected devices, leading to
further adoption of IPv6. In addition, some natural
technical migrations will help. For example, Bluetooth's new version 4.2 incorporates IPv6. Going
forward, expect unit sales of IPv6-enabled devices
to grow, and the installed base to grow as well.
MARCH/APRIL 2016

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i3 - March/April 2016

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