Mobile video viewing up over 200 hours a year since 2012: Ericsson report

Mobile video viewing has gone up over 200 hours since 2012 as weekly share of time spent watching TV, on-demand video on mobile devices has grown up by 85% in the last six years, a report by a division of global network and telecommunications equipment company, Ericsson, showed.

"Average viewing times on mobile devices has grown by more than 200 hours a year since 2012, driving up overall TV and video viewing by an additional 1.5 hours a week. The surge in mobile viewing is offset with a decline in fixed screen viewing of 2.5 hours a week, however the appetite for TV and video is not waning," the report explains noting that views on fixed screens has gone down by 14 percent over the same period.

However, the report, also pointed out that there is low consumer satisfaction when they try to find something to watch. "Nearly 44% percent of US consumers say they can't find anything to watch on linear TV on a daily basis, an increase of 22% compared with last year," the report read.

"Based on our extensive research, we can see consumers increasingly ask for seamless access to high quality TV and video content, across services and devices. For consumers in general, and millennials in particular, being able to watch on the smartphone is key. Consumers not only want the shared, social broadcast TV experience, they also expect the flexibility of an à la carte on-demand media offering," Zeynep Ahmed, senior advisor, Ericsson ConsumerLab, said adding that "the findings suggest that although the VOD discovery process is more time consuming than with linear broadcast TV, consumers rate it as less frustrating, as it implicitly promises the opportunity to find something they want to watch, when they want to watch it."

The report also notes that paradoxically, 63% of consumers claim that they are very satisfied with content discovery when it comes to their VOD service, while only 51% say the same for linear TV.

The report is based on interviews with 30,000 individuals in 24 countries (including India), statistically representing the views of 1.1 billion people.