My parents discouraged spending endless hours watching TV. It was considered to be “anti-social” to sit in front of the tube. Ericsson has released a study showing that TV viewing is increasingly being accompanied by use of social media, providing kids worldwide with quantitative evidence and a snappy retort to parents who tell the kids to go out to play with their friends. The report, “TV AND VIDEO: An analysis of evolving consumer habits“, finds that TV viewing increasingly accompanied by use of social media. Among the key findings:
- Social TV is exploding – 62 percent of consumers use social media while watching TV. This has increased by 18 percentage points since 2011.
- Consumers are not cutting their traditional TV subscriptions on a large scale – in fact only 7 percent have canceled their TV packages since 2011.
- HD quality remains key – 41 percent of consumers are willing to pay for HD quality. The importance of high-quality images increases on devices with bigger screens such as TVs and tablets.
- Mobile devices are an important part of the TV experience – 67 percent use tablets, smartphones or laptops in their everyday TV viewing, both for video consumption and to enable a social media experience while watching TV.
- TV anytime and anywhere is finally a mass market service – 60 percent of consumers watch video on-demand on a weekly basis. New, easy-to-use services trigger mobile viewing habits.
The report is based on analysis of viewing habits around the world: the US, UK, China, Taiwan, Germany, Spain and Sweden. These are countries with diverse cultural ties to traditional TV, different internet and mobile broadband competitive industry models. As such, the study provides an interesting snapshot of trends in the evolution of multi-screen viewing.
There are many observations in the report worth exploring in greater depth.