63% of Mobile Video Consumption Happens at Home

Fully 63 percent of digital video screening on mobile phones does not happen on-the-go, but rather at home, a study conducted on behalf of  the  Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has found. 

Some 36 percent of these home-based digital video activities happen in a room where a second screen also is present (television, PC or tablet), IAB says. 

This is perhaps the inkling of a future shift in the mobile video medium. 

Initially, the thinking was that people would watch bits of video in "interstitial" time, between other activities, or while waiting at a bus stop, for example. Also, the general thinking was that people would naturally want to use the biggest available screen.

The IAB findings tend to refute the notion that mobile video is something consumers use haphazardly,  at odd times of the day, when they have nothing else going on and no other screen available. 

That might suggest users have a preference for the mobile experience even when they are stationary and have other screens available, and that a distinct "fourth screen experience" is developing, with potential attributes different from television, PC and tablet video consumption. In fact, use of a phone to watch video when other screens readily are available suggests there is something about mobile viewing that users see as "better" than viewing on a larger screen, for whatever reason.


Mobile video usage also appears to taking on some of the patterns of traditional television consumption, with a "prime time" period in the evening.  About 22 percent of video interactions were purposefully planned, while 18 percent of views were "because I was bored" motivations, and only three percent of mobile viewing happened because no other screen was available.

On the other hand, the study also shows that short form content remains the driver for mobile viewing.  The most-frequently-viewed genres in mobile video included music videos (45 percent), movie trailers (42 percent), tutorials/How-To's (41 percent) and funny short video clips (37 percent).

Humorous short clips (66 percent) and music videos (52 percent) are the most likely to be shared. And it is that sharing that is shaping up as a distinctive feature of the mobile video experience.

The findings continue to suggest that short form content is best suited to mobile consumption, or at least that is what consumers choose to do, at the moment. Where people are watching (at home), what they are watching (short form content), when they are watching (prime time) and why they are not using a larger screen are relevant observations. 

It remains possible that many mobile viewers do not use a larger screen, even when it is available, for some technology reason (TV doesn't have Internet connection), because others are using the other screens at the moment or simply because they prefer the mobile experience. 

Nor does the study shed much light on a related, but different issue, namely whether users would choose to view long-form content on a mobile screen when other screens are available, and whether the type of content to be viewed makes a difference. In other words, it is conceivable a single person watching news would choose to view on a tablet, but that same person might prefer to watch a high-definition movie on the biggest screen, especially when it is a shared experience. 

The IAB study does not address those other questions. 

Consumer "Media" Preferences are Shifting

If, over the last four years, consumers have consistently spent less time with television, radio and print media, while steadily spending more time consuming media on mobile devices, what would that tell you?

True, we haven't yet seen significant shifts in revenue for video entertainment services, and one might argue that advertising revenues related to media consumption have not yet budged much, either. 

But, sooner or later, advertising follows audience attention. 

Mobile Broadband Became Majority of Access in G-20 Countries in 5 Years

It sometimes is hard to comprehend just how fast trends related to the Internet can change. 

Consider that, in the G-20 countries, mobile broadband went from negligible to a majority of all access connections in just five years, between 2005 and 2010. 

In five more years, in 2015, mobile G-20 Internet connections will be about 80 percent of all connecttions, Business Insider estimates.

Middle Class Will Explode Globally, So Will Use of Broadband Internet

Middle classes most everywhere in the developing world are poised to expand substantially in terms of both absolute numbers and the percentage of the population that can claim middle class status during the next 15-20 years, according to the National Intelligence Council. 

That has huge implications for providers of communication services, especially Internet-related applications and services. India, China and the rest of Asia provide examples, as those regions will far outstrip the share of middle class consumption in the United States, Japan and European Union, for example. 

At the same time, the United States, European, and Japanese share of global income is projected to fall from 56 percent today to well under half by 2030.

Note the dramatic increase in economic growth the Council expects will happen between now and 2030. It took Britain 155 years to double gross domestic product per capita, The United States and Germany took between 30 and 60 years to do so.

India and China are doing this at a scale and pace  not seen before: 100 times the people than Britain and yet a doubling of GDP in one tenth the time. By 2030 Asia will be well on its way to returning to being the world’s powerhouse, just as it was before 1500, NIC analysts say.

Sub-Saharan Africa, rural India, and other traditionally isolated regions are being globally connected. Mobile devices are becoming increasingly rich sensor platforms, enabling nearly all communication mediated by technology to be tracked and analyzed at a fine level of detail.

More than 70 percent of the world’s population already has at least one mobile device; global mobile data traffic in 2010 was three times the size of the entire Internet in 2000.

By 2015, in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, more people will have mobile network access than with electricity at home.

As much as it has been a "problem" figuring how to ensure that billions of humans who "never have made a phone call" is a problem we have largely solved, the next challenge is assuring that those billions of people who do not presently use the Internet can do so.

The amount of change we will see will be breathtaking.

Samsung to Build Galaxy Note III with 6.3-Inch Screen?

The upcoming Galaxy Note III will feature a 6.3-inch screen using an OLED display, Korea Times reports. 

That is going to blur the line between the biggest-screen smart phones and the smallest-screen tablets even further. 

To be sure, some are skeptical about the new form factor. As with "tablets" themselves, many in the past have tried to create such a device, and largely failed. 

But ABI Research 208 million "phablets" will be shipped in 2015, globally. Of course, much could depend on how one defines a "phablet." ABI Research reserves that category for devices with phone functionality and a touch screen between 4.6 and 5.5 inches. 

That wouldn't be a phablet, that's just a smart phone, in my estimation. But users will decide. Somewhere between a seven-inch screen, the present low end of tablets, and five or so inches, the current high end of smart phone screens, is where the issue has to be decided. 

It may come down to how many users want a communicating tablet that is highly portable, versus users who want a Web-oriented phone. Some of us might harken back a few years, when the primary reason for using a smart phone was to get mobile email.

For some of us, there came a time when easy "Web" use became important, then more important than email, and that's when some of us might have decided it was time to ditch the BlackBerry. 

These days, though I find I expect my smart phone to work as a phone, more of the mission critical functionality continues to migrate to Web and apps, where a larger screen really makes a difference, and where one expects an app to work pretty much the same on the smart phone screen as it does on a larger-screen device. 

Portability is important, which is why some of us always thought a seven-inch tablet would be well received by a significant portion of the user base. These days, though, "device creep" can be an issue.

For many people who travel, for example, or who work outside the office, a tablet is a reasonable substitute for a notebook. That is not an option for some of us, who still wind up traveling with a notebook, one or two smart phones, then a tablet and an MP3 player (the smallest possible unit that can be clipped on running shorts). As always, the ability to ditch at least of those devices is helpful and valuable. 

That's a bit of a niche, but some of us still would say there is a market for smart phones with big screens, if only because of the growing importance of things we need to do with screens, as opposed to "phones."

US Won't ratify UN Internet Treaty

The United States said Thursday that it will not ratify a United Nations telecommunications treaty after raising concerns that it would disrupt the current governance structure of the Internet and open the door for online censorship.





The U.K. and Canada also said they would not ratify the treaty after negotiations ended at a conference hosted by the U.N. International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Dubai.

TechNet, TechAmerica, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and The Internet Association argued that the ITU should be excluded from decisions regarding the governance of the Internet. 

India to Launch Major Cable TV-Based Broadband Initiative?

Of India's 100 million Internet users, about 12.5 million have broadband. India's government seems to want to change that, and seems to want to rely on cable TV networks that already reach about 90 million Indian households, Businessweek reports.

A new telecom policy that would ease foreign investment rules for cable TV providers of broadband access seeks to boost the number of broadband connections to 175 million, by 2017, reaching 600 million by 2020.

The new policy might not have immediate implications for rural broadband, though. Right now there are about 260,000 broadband connections in rural India, though 800 million people live in those rural areas, including at least 600,000 villages. 

One has to assume wireless is key to any future progress, as the cost of  building a kilometer of fixed network plant costs about $60,000 to $70,000. Those costs have tended in the past to encourage experiments with kiosks  and other methods of getting connectivity to a village. 

Separately, the Indian government is building a $4.5 billion National Optic Fiber Network (NOFN), to take broadband connectivity to the villages by 2014. But some earlier efforts have failed. 

Called Bharat Broadband, the project will connect 250,000 self-governing bodies at the village level across the country. 

Though Indian rural Internet access might be as low as two percent of households at the moment, we should expect to see enormous changes over the next 10 years.

The number of users is expected to climb from 120 million to 350 million by 2015, for example,  according to McKinsey, largely in urban areas, as you would expect. 

According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India and Indian Market Research Bureau there are 38 million people in rural India who have used the Internet at least once in their life, and this number is expected to reach 45 million by December 2012.

That would boost rural India Internet penetration  has grown from 2.6 percent in 2010 to 4.6 percent in 2012. 

At least 90 percent of Indian villages have inadequate communications facilities, according ot the World Bank. "With few exceptions, their telecommunications connection to the outside world amounts to one public telephone," the World Bank has said.