10.27.2009 — Men in their 30s have different priorities than men in their 40s, including the performance of their electronics.

Your clients are mostly men in their mid-40s. That’s confirmed by several Electronic House readership surveys. If you own a custom electronics company, you’re also probably in your mid-40s.

The problem, which we recently pointed out, is that you’ll continue to get older but your average customer will not. Do you know what guys in their 30s, your next wave of customers, want from their electronics?

We surveyed men in their 30s (see sidebar for parameters) on their technology habits and found some noteworthy trends. For instance, the custom electronics industry places a lot more emphasis on video quality than the surveyed consumers do.

• Only 27% say they’re only willing to watch HD content
• 41% said HD isn’t a big deal
• 96% say they watch online video
• Only 16% describe themselves as audiophiles
• Only 8% own a Blu-ray player

While it appears that custom electronics dealers ought to re-prioritize, the survey reveals new opportunities. Audio/video content aggregation seems to be a high priority for the men surveyed.

In fact, 70 percent expressed interest in watching online content on their TVs. Integrators can potentially play a vital role in providing Netflix, iTunes, Hulu and YouTube content in a user-friendly home entertainment system.

Click here to see the results.