62% use social media while watching TV daily

The results of Ericsson ConsumerLab’s annual study – presented in the TV & Video Consumer Trend Report 2012 – reveal that social TV is becoming a mass-market phenomenon globally.

62% of consumers use social media while watching TV on a weekly basis, an increase of 18 percentage points in one year. By gender, 66% of women engage in this behaviour, compared to 58% of men.

25% of consumers use social media to discuss what they are watching while they are watching it.

Niklas Rönnblom, Ericsson ConsumerLab senior advisor, says: “Mobile devices are an important part of the TV experience, as 67% of consumers use smartphones, tablets or laptops for TV and video viewing. Furthermore, 60% of consumers say they use on-demand services on a weekly basis. Watching TV on the move is growing in popularity, and 50% of the time spent watching TV and video on the smartphone, is done outside the home, where mobile broadband connections are facilitating the increase.”

Although viewing behaviours and demands are changing, only 7% of consumers say they will reduce their TV subscriptions in the future. In fact, instead of looking to cut costs, consumers are willing to pay more for an enhanced viewing experience: 41% of consumers say they are willing to pay for TV and video content in HD.

More than half of consumers want to be able to choose their own TV and video content. Rönnblom says: “As the number of screens and services increase, people are eagerly looking for an easy-to-use, aggregated service that can bring everything together. It should allow consumers to mix on-demand and linear TV including live content, facilitate content discovery, leverage the value of social TV and provide seamless access across devices.”

Data was collected in Brazil, Chile, China, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, UK and the US. In all, 14 qualitative and 12,000 quantitative online interviews were conducted representing more than 460 million consumers.