Ericsson: Video viewing time up as mobile rivals TV

People are watching more content than ever before as mobile viewing time moves closer to an equal split with fixed TV viewing, according to new Ericsson ConsumerLab research.

In stats revealed at MIPCOM this week, ahead of the publication of its latest TV and media report, Ericsson said that the ratio between viewing on fixed screens such as TVs and desktops and mobile screens is close to 60:40 this year -compared to almost 70:30 in 2010.

Anders Erlandsson, senior advisor, consumer insights, Ericsson ConsumerLab said we are “clearly heading towards” a 50:50 split.

“Overall viewing hours is increasing year-by-year – so people watch more now than they have ever done. But we are also seeing how viewing on fixed screens and viewing on mobile and portable screens – that proportion is changing.”

Ericsson said that since 2010 the share of time watching on TV screens has dropped from 50% to 45%, while over the same time period, the share of time spent watching on mobile screens has increased by 85%.

“Smartphone viewing has gone from only 6% back in 2010 – this year it as much as 15% out of the total viewing,” said Erlandsson.

“What is really happening is there is an addition because mobile viewing is done on top of everything else. So people are doing more viewing than they have ever done before.”

Since 2012, viewing on portable screens – phones, tablets and laptops – has added total growth of four hours per week. Viewing on TV screens has diminished by two and a half hours, but that still leaves “significant growth” of one and a half hours per week.

One in three millennials aged 16-24 also said that portable screens are more important for video consumption than their home TV, according to the research.

Elsewhere, the research said that streamed on-demand movies and TV programmes have increased their share by 50% since 2010, while short video clip viewing on sites like YouTube has increased its share by almost 90% since 2010.

Scheduled linear TV has lost 8 percentage points in share of total viewing time over the same period, but is still roughly twice as big as any other type of video consumption.

Viewing of TV and movies is up 100% since 2011 while the average household now uses 1.5 scheduled linear TV services and 3.4 video-on-demand services, according to the research.

Ericsson has published its ConsumerLab media report annually since 2010. This year it polled 100,000 respondents and said that the research represented the views 1.1 billion people across 40 countries and 15 ‘megacities’.