Mobile video viewing up by over 200 hours a year since 2012
There has been a continued shift towards mobile video viewing in recent years, according to new research. Average viewing times on mobile devices has grown by more than 200 hours a year since 2012, driving up overall TV and video viewing by an additional 1.5 hours a week, said Ericsson.
The surge in mobile viewing is offset with a decline in fixed screen viewing of 2.5 hours a week, however the appetite for TV and video is not waning, showed the Ericsson ConsumerLab TV & Media Report. Weekly share of time spent watching TV and video on mobile devices has grown by 85% (2010 to 2016); on fixed screens it has gone down by 14% over the same period.
Altogether, 40% of consumers globally are ‘very interested’ in a mobile data plan that includes unrestricted video streaming. For instance, in the US, 20% of mobile viewing is paid-for content using services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.
However, a major issue, highlighted by the report, is low consumer satisfaction when trying to find something to watch. In the US, 44% of consumers say they cannot find anything to watch on linear TV on a daily basis, an increase of 22% compared with last year (36%). In contrast, US consumers spend 45% more time choosing what to watch on video on demand (VoD) services than linear TV.
Paradoxically, 63% of consumers claim that they are very satisfied with content discovery when it comes to their VoD service, while only 51% say the same for linear TV. The findings suggest that although the VoD discovery process is more time consuming than with linear broadcast TV, consumers rate it as less frustrating, as it implicitly promises.
The total viewing time of on-demand content, such as streamed TV series, movies and other TV programmes, has increased 50% since 2010. Strong indicators of this growing engagement and satisfaction with VoD services include that consumers continue to embrace binge watching; 37%watch two or more episodes of the same show in a row on a weekly basis, more than a fifth say they do this daily. Also, consumer spending on VoD services in the US has increased by over 60% since 2012, from $13 to $20 per month.
Altogether, 40% of respondents say they watch YouTube daily; a substantial 10% of consumers say they watch YouTube for more than three hours a day.
Zeynep Ahmet, senior advisor, Ericsson ConsumerLab, said: “Based on our extensive research, we can see consumers increasingly ask for seamless access to high quality TV and video content, across services and devices. For consumers in general, and Millennials in particular, being able to watch on the smartphone is key. Consumers not only want the shared, social broadcast TV experience, they also expect the flexibility of an à la carte on-demand media offering. Today’s experience is multifaceted and consumers want to create their own worlds of compelling, personalised content.”
