Mobile video consumption up 66% in last year
The number of people watching videos via their mobile phone handsets has increased 66% in the last year, up to 12.1 million users across the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
Around 2.7 million people watch mobile videos in the UK, which is an increase of 75% compared to July 2009, although Spain is seeing the fastest growth, with mobile video consumption up 90% in the last year, according to data from comScore’s MobiLens service.
On-demand viewing has seen huge jump, up 99% since last July, with 5.2 million mobile phone owners in Europe viewing on-demand content via their handsets. Broadcast television viewing via mobiles is also on the rise, up 70% to 3.5 million subscribers.
“The era of ‘video-on-the-go’ has finally arrived,” said comScore’s Jeremy Copp. “We’ve seen major developments throughout the mobile space – in networks, in devices and in software and applications – and now we’re seeing the result: a rapidly growing audience of consumers accessing video on their mobiles, be it broadcast, on-demand or sideloaded.”
comScore attributes the growing mobile video trend to the increasing number of smartphones on the market. There are now 60.8 million smartphone users across the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. A recent Informa Telecoms & Media study also shows that global smartphone sales were up 15% year on year to 187.2 million in 2009. Informa predicts that sales will surpass 255 million unit sales worldwide in 2010. Informa said this rise is due to popular and innovative new devices such as Apple’s iPhone4, Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10 and Samsung’s Galaxy S handsets
Across the five European countries monitored in comScore’s research, two out of every three people who viewed mobille TV/video were smartphone owners. In the UK, more than 80% were smartphones owners, which is more than the other four countries.
“Smartphone owners aupre clearly driving the mobile video trend, an indication that more growth is on the horizon as an increasing number of smartphones hit the market,” Copp continued. “We’ve also seen that recent releases such as Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab are designed to offer an incredible video experience, and when coupled with services such as the BBC iPlayer for mobile, make this an extremely interesting sector to watch.”