According to In-Stat’s recent report, nearly two-thirds of smartphone and almost 86% of tablet users have watched video on their device, representing a “rapidly developing market.” The research company argues that even though many mobile video products have only recently launched, providers are experiencing significant growth in usage rates with mobile video consumption forecasted to surpass 693 billion minutes by 2015.
However and as expected, consumption differs significantly between smartphones, tablets and notebook/netbooks. Differences include content length, content genre and content acquisition.
At the moment, there are significantly more smartphone viewers than tablet viewers, but that 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.
Interestingly enough, even though we’re talking about mobile devices, the majority of video access is still occurring in a non-mobile environment, often in the home.
Finally, In-Stat says that the largest barriers to mobile video growth are those erected by content owners, followed by network capacity issues…