What Tech Products Are Betabounders Excited About This Holiday Season?
We recently surveyed our community of beta testers and asked them about the products they’re considering purchasing or returning, as well as what products they’re excited to see launch in the new year. With over 3,500 respondents, we have our answers! Being a part of the beta testing industry, our team geeks out over tech buying trends — so we thought you might also be interested in learning more about what’s on your fellow Betabounders’ holiday shopping lists (and why)!
Laptops, tablets, smart home devices, wearables, and smart TVs were the most popular product types our community is considering purchasing this holiday season. The data collected amongst Betabounders was complementary to Best Buys’ coveted holiday ‘Top Tech’ list. However, we were a little surprised that VR and AR headsets weren’t more popular. How about you?
The most common ways our beta testers hear about new technology products is through blogs, social media, and online searches. Personally, I was surprised that more human interactions aren’t nearly as prominent — like an in-person interaction with a product or receiving a personal recommendation. So I conducted an internal survey of the Centercode team and found the same data to be true!
28% of Centercoders rely on social media and 20% of them depend on blogs as their main sources for hearing about new tech products. What do you think? Are we more reliant on online reviews and recommendations? Or maybe we’re more comfortable with face-screen interactions rather than face-to-face ones? Our working theory is that we’re a community of tech early adopters, so many of us probably have friends and loved ones coming to us as their go-to tech person, so we tend to rely on online sources. What do you think?
Overwhelmingly, most of you would swap a tech product you were gifted for a similar one, or one that more closely matched what you were looking for. For example, maybe you received a Garmin Vivosport fitness tracker but decided to switch it for a Fitbit Charge 2. As tech lovers, we completely understand swapping rather than returning a gift.
Coming in second place were tech products that were not supported by the devices you already own. This is a concern our clients are particularly wary of. When managing beta tests, we usually seek testers from a wide variety of device ownerships. Product developers are aware that in order for their product to succeed in the wild, it must be able to “talk” to all the top players in tech currently in the hands of users.
Our team was really interested by this data point because it proved that a new tech product needs to be able to “survive in the wild” in terms of connectivity. Furthermore, that we live in a world where gifters have to be aware of the devices the giftee owns to ensure the gift is well-received (and not returned — dun dun!).
This might be our favorite question from this survey. Betabounders are most excited to see new tech products from Google, Amazon, Samsung, Apple, and Sony in 2017. In the ‘Other’ category, our testers were especially looking forward to upcoming releases from companies like Nest, LG, and OnePlus (to name a few). Were you impressed by products like Google Pixel, Amazon Echo, or the Samsung Gear VR? We want to hear from you! Comment below with your predictions for tech products in 2017. Who knows, we could be running beta tests for them in the coming year!
A big thank-you to all the Betabounders that took our Holiday Tech Buys Survey! As a community of early adopters, our clients are always interested to know what tech products are gaining momentum with our testers (particularly during the gifting season). These community surveys offer us unique insights about the products that interest our testers, which helps us attract new companies to come beta test with us (win-win!). If you’d like to share your thoughts about the data presented in this blog post, feel free to comment below or email us at hello@betabound.com. We’d love to hear from you!