Video paid for by half of India’s mobile users

Rebecca Hawkes ©RapidTVNews | 20-02-2012


India is embracing monetized mobile content, with 50% of mobile users now paying for video to view on their phones or tablets, according to a new study.
The figure compares to 26% in the UK and 47% in Malaysia – the other two countries surveyed in the report commissioned by media delivery company Vidiator.
Over two thirds of the 1,500 respondents in India, the UK and Malaysia said they would, however, be willing to pay for content if service providers could improve quality of experience.
In particular, there would be greater take-up if mobile content did not take so long to download and was not hampered by poor image quality, the survey found.
The slow load time and buffering appears off putting, with over 50% of mobile users in the UK, 68% in India and 89% of people in Malaysia dissatisfied with the time it takes video to load onto handheld mobile devices.
Poor video quality is a concern to 61% of Malaysian consumers, compared to 33% in India, and just 19% in the UK. In the UK, however, interruption to playback spoils the video enjoyment of 41% of subscribers.
Despite this, UK 73% of mobile users in the UK have already paid for mobile video or would consider it in the future, compared to 64% in India and 74% in Malaysia.
"Video consumption on tablets and mobiles is widely expected to double in the first six months of 2012. These results confirm that there is clearly a big global appetite for good quality mobile video content and that people are prepared to pay for it," said Tae Sung Park, chief executive, Vidiator.
"Poor quality content and slow delivery is putting people off using video more often and the results show that operators aren't yet making the most of the huge mobile video opportunity. Content providers are facing a big challenge of how to monetize video and these results show what they need to do - deliver good quality content and do it quickly."