Mobile video viewing still a novelty
MOBILE: Use of smart phone application is set to surge, report says
By Danny King -- Video Business, 10/13/2009
OCT. 13 | MOBILE: Despite the perception that video viewing on smart phones is growing by leaps and bounds, a very small percentage of U.S. mobile subscribers actually watch video on the tiny screens, according to one research report.
Just 6% of U.S. mobile subscribers regularly used Web-video applications during the first quarter, compared to 58% for text messaging, 28% for picture messaging and 20% for general Internet use, Nielsen said in a report. Mobile applications related to ringtones and videogames were also more likely to be used than Web-video applications.
With less than one in 15 mobile phone subscribers using Web-video applications, mobile video use is set to surge over the next few years as more people buy so-called smart phones such as Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry, while media companies make a wider array of video content playable on mobile phones. The number of U.S. Web-video subscribers jumped 33% during the quarter to 20 million, Nielsen said.
Much of that recent growth might have come from a surge in the number of women, teens and older people that access the Internet with their mobile devices. About 57 million people were mobile-Web users in July, up 34% from a year earlier, Nielsen said in a separate report last month. Mobile-Web use among women rose 43% in the past year, while mobile-Web use by people 65 and older surged 67%, Nielsen said.
The surge in mobile device adoption will pave the way for so-called "fourth-screen" products such as media phones, which were first sold in the U.S. last year. About 30 million media phones will be shipped globally in 2014, generating more than $5 billion in sales, ABI Research said in a report last month.
Although mobile-video use on cell phones is still somewhat of a novelty in the U.S., domestic use of such applications dwarfs that of countries in Europe, Asia and South America, Nielsen said last week. About 3% of mobile phone subscribers in European countries such as the U.K., Spain and Italy use Web-video applications, and such applications are used by about 1% of mobile-phone subscribers in countries such as Brazil, India and Turkey, according to Nielsen.
