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Upside Potential for Mobile Video Service Adoption

Here in the U.S. market, the notion that people would subscribe and pay for broadcast TV content delivered to their mobile phone was a classic example of unreal expectations -- based upon inconclusive market research. In contrast, on-demand mobile video consumption is apparently gaining new interest.

Although many mobile video products have only recently launched, providers are experiencing significant growth in usage rates.

According to the latest market study by In-Stat, nearly two-thirds of smartphone owners have watched video on their device, while nearly 86 percent of media tablet owners have already done so.

While the propensity to watch full-length premium video is only a portion of these video viewers, these numbers indicate the potential market demand. These examples are indicative of a larger trend of strong growth in mobile video consumption worldwide.

As a result, In-Stat now forecasts that mobile video consumption will surpass 693 billion minutes by 2015.

"As content restrictions are liberalized and the proliferation of smartphone and tablet devices continues to expand, so too will mobile video consumption," says Amy Cravens, Market Analyst at In-Stat.

However, it is important to note that the consumption differs significantly between smartphones, tablets, and notebook or netbook PCs. Differences include content length, content genre, and content acquisition. Content providers need to customize their offerings by target platform.

In-Stat's latest market study findings include:
  • There are significantly more smartphone viewers than tablet viewers currently. However, the gap will narrow in coming years.
  • Tablet viewer watch more video and are willing to pay a higher price for that video compared to smartphone viewers.
  • The majority of video access is occurring in a non-mobile environment, often in the home, particularly for tablet devices and in the consumption of long-form video.
  • The largest barriers to mobile video growth are those erected by content owners, followed by network capacity issues.

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