For Service Providers, Tablets Might Not Matter, Video Does

Whether the “post-PC” device trend will help or harm mobile and fixed network Internet service providers is not completely clear. What does seem clear is that video entertainment preferences and behavior will be the primary development, use of devices arguably being secondary.

Bell Labs predicts  that, by 2020, consumers in the United States alone will consume seven hours of video each day, compared to 4.8 hours in 2012,, and will increasingly consume this additional video on  tablets, both at home and on the go. Those figures include consumption of standard linear TV, time shifted video and “on demand” video, as well as use of video communications.

As you might guess, on demand programming will be key. Some 70 percent of daily video consumption will be of on-demand sources, compared with 33 percent “live” content. Overall, Internet video consumption will grow by a factor of 12, Bell Labs predicts.
The total time spent watching video likely will take the form of multi-tasking, so users might “watch” seven hours of video in five hours, including situations where a TV is on and a user is engaged in a video call as well. 

The proportion of time spent watching video-on-demand services and web-based video will
grow from 33 percent to 77 percent, meaning the relative share of viewing time for linear TV will drop from 66 percent to about 10 percent.

Some 10.5 percent of video on demand and 8.5 percent of over the top  video consumption will
occur at the peak hour of 8:00 p.m.