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For decades, the television was the flagship of any consumer-electronics product line-up. In all the gadgets in the home, the TV held the most prominent real estate in the living room, cost the mast to buy, and carry me biggest brand mark.(1)____(2)____ And for consumer-electronics makers who manufactured them, selling TVs was agood business.
As the bulky cathode-ray tube televisions of the past turned into the sleek, flat-screen televisions of today, another shift started to occur. The price competition was merciful and unrelenting since the televisions were hard to differentiate.(3)____ Even so consumers were buying more televisions than ever, TV makers struggled to tum a profit.(4)____ Now, another shift is taking place, and it rs threatening to rob tele-visions their prominence-and value-in the home.(5)____ With more people streaming or downloading video as an alternation to cable or satellite broadcast, more consumers are watching TV shows and movies on smartphones, tablets and laptops.(6)____ The television, meanwhile, may become just another screen. " That' s a very real possibility,”says Paul Gagnon,the director of North American TV research for DisplaySearch, a market-research firm based in Santa Clara, Calif. When televisions end up becoming just another monitor, he says, " that is a low-profit, no-money business with just a handfulof players.”(7)____(8)____
To stay ahead of changing viewing habits, television makers
are pushing Web-connected televisions loading with applications.(9)____Web TVs count for about a quarter of all new flat-panel televisions this years, rising to about half of all shipments in three years, according to DisplaySearch.(10)____
