LAS VEGAS – The mobile video business was a half-billion-dollar business in 2006, with US$250 million coming in the fourth quarter of the year, according to Levi Shapiro of research firm Telephia, who presented his data at the NATPE Mobile++ day on Monday.
His company analyzes the actual bills of Verizon Vcast customers to look for trends and found that six million Americans took part in the mobile video market in 2006, more than double 2005.
In an earlier session, John Gauntt, senior analyst at eMarketer, presented data that said the global mobile content market will be a US$11.3 billion market by 2011, with $4.3 billion of that from mobile TV applications
Of the Verizon users analyzed by Telephia, 70% are male and three-quarters are under the age of 35.
But the usage pattern "is not what I expected," said Shapiro, who formerly worked for a mobile video company that "expected this to be a commuter story. In 2006, of the 18-24 year old group, 26% watched videos at home, the largest segment.
The 25-36 group did watch while commuting, but only around 20%. The rest of the time they watched video in the office or at home or elsewhere. Thirty-five percent of the 37-55 group did most of their video viewing in the office on their cell phones.
Overall, 60% of the mobile video viewing was done during the day and less than 10% during the commute to and from work, said Shapiro.
And what about the assumption mobile video users only want super-quick snacks of video? That, too, may be wrong as Telephia found that 82% of the market watched more than five minutes of video at a time.
When it came to genres of programming, news, weather and sports has 85% to 88% coverage of subscribers but when it came to paying to watch content, the number one choice was comedy, followed by music and entertainment.
Greg O’Brien is editor and publisher of Cartt.ca and is attending NATPE in Las Vegas.
