Majority of consumers watch long-form and short-form mobile video


Details

Michelle Clancy

| 15 January 2016




Almost three-quarters of US smartphone users watch short video clips daily, says researcher Parks Associates.



The analyst found that smartphone consumers are embracing many new use cases as their smartphones become more intelligent and multifunctional. Voice calls and texting are still the dominant activities, but video is on the rise.

More than 20% of smartphone users spend more than 30 minutes each day watching short streaming video clips (such as YouTube clips or music videos). More than 40% of smartphone users watch long streaming videos at least once a day (such as movies or complete TV shows), and the majority of them spend more than 30 minutes per day on it.

Also, 80% of smartphone owners use social networking apps at least once a day — a common originator for video clips — and 35% spend an hour or more on this activity.

"Consumer appetite for mobile data is very strong, but currently most subscribers use less than half of their allotted data, while those with high data plans use even less," said Harry Wang, director, Health & Mobile Product Research, Parks Associates. "For mobile operators, pushing consumers to sign up for a bigger data plan will have its limits. More and more consumers will start to compare payment to data usage and discover that they are eating a small portion but paying the price of a family-sized meal."

Citing leading provider AT&T, Parks analysts also noted that mobile operators will likely continue to explore new and novel strategies to attract mobile data subscribers. "AT&T is looking to leverage its acquisition of DIRECTV to build its mobile data business by re-introducing its offer of unlimited data as a reward to customers who sign up for the satellite TV service," Wang added.

Parks also expects data sharing to play a big role in mobile app usage, Roughly half of US smartphone owners with a limited data plan currently share data between multiple devices, and 87% of them share data among multiple smartphones.