Research: UK mobile viewing not increasing
October 3, 2019
Nik Roseveare @ Brand Licensing Europe
Viewing content on-the-go via a portable device is not seeing any noticeable increase in the UK. Sam Tuck, Associate Director at market research institute GfK, said the firm fully expected to see an increase in the uptake – but in recent years it’s simply not happened.
Speaking at the Brand Licensing Europe event in London, Tuck suggested that one of the reasons for this is that a lot of content today is perceived as “high-end” and thus viewers don’t feel that watching it on a small screen is doing it justice. They prefer to watch at home on their main (big) living-room TV screen.
Tuck added that whilst London-centric dwellers – where a long commute to work is common – may think mobile viewing is a familiar thing, viewers in general aren’t doing it. Viewing on a TV screen has remained constantly steady throughout the UK despite the advent of downloading content onto tablets and phones.
On the subject of downloading, Tuck again pointed out that most people simply don’t do it. Viewers prefer to directly stream content rather than download it to watch at another time with no Internet connection. Tuck said that “maybe only two or three per cent of SVoD content [on a portable device]” is downloaded. The key reasons for this is down to people not knowing how to do it or – more prevalent – due to a lack of storage data on their device.