Catch-up TV fails to take off on smartphones and tablets

A new survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of FirstSource Solutions has been produced to determine the national preferences for catch-up TV and the platforms by which people like to watch on-demand services.

The research revealed that streaming catch-up TV via laptops is the preferred method with 30% of all respondents saying that they used their laptops for services such as BBC iPlayer and 4 on Demand.

54% of 18-24 year-olds use said they their laptops for catch-up TV purposes, the highest figure of all the age groups asked.

Just 16%, however, use catch-up services on televisions, and only 9% use digital video recording services such as Sky+ to record programmes to a set-top box.

Despite the rapid growth of smartphone and tablet use in the UK over the past year, the survey suggests that streaming via these devices has not yet taken off.

It was revealed that a tiny 1% of all respondents prefer to use their smartphones as a catch-up TV platform, with the highest percentage figure belonging to the 25-34 age group (4%) and the lowest to the 45-54 age group (0%).

Tablets faired slightly better than smartphones with 3% of consumers saying that tablets were their preferred method for streaming TV on Demand.