As the migration to mobile devices continues unabated, various studies keep us abreast of the impact of such a migration. As to be expected, Apple is the leader of the pack in this field, thanks to the popularity of their mobile devices. So much so, in fact, Apple’s brand worth has skyrocketed to become the most valuable brand in the world. Such a climb is largely attributed to Apple’s mobile device department.
The popularity of both the iPhone and the iPad can be seen clearly when various user metrics are crunched, in this case, mobile video usage. Even though the iMobileDevice environment doesn’t naturally support the Flash format, Apple devices dominate the market in terms of which devices use mobile video the most. The proliferation of the Apple’s mobile devices plays a large part in such consumption, something the Video Monetization Report (PDF), commissioned by Freewheel.tv demonstrates quite clearly.
While the report deals primarily with money-making in regards to advertising with online videos — hence the title — the mobile device industry’s impact is also acknowledged. While the footprint of mobile device video consumption is still on the rise, meaning it isn’t at the level of those connecting from a wired network. The report’s details:
In comparison to wired video viewing, consumers viewing video on their mobile devices is small and is currently driven by Apple devices, which make up 80% of all video views between iPhones, iPod Touches and the iPad. This majority reflects the number of these devices in market and their early dominance in the smart-device sector… It also reflects the development priorities of content producers and distributors: they optimized their content first for the Apple platforms, with Android a later priority.
In the case of mobile video intake, it’s pretty clear Rim and Nokia are receiving little to none of the consideration the Apple and Android devices are. For Nokia, it’s understandable, but in regards to Rim, makers of the BlackBerry, it’s surprising. As of October of 2010, there were more BlackBerry subscribers than there were for the iPhone.
Nevertheless, Apple is the perceived king of the mobile industry, correctly or otherwise, and it shows in the amount of mobile video being consumed by Apple iDevice users. Apparently, the iDevice of choice to view online videos is the iPad. The report states:
Though there are fewer than 20 million iPads in the global market right now (Apple statistics for Q1 2011) and many more iPhones and iPods, iPads currently make up 20% of all wireless video views (see chart 7). These tablets are clearly being used as digital video delivery devices.
Considering the yearly increase of using an iPad to watch online videos, and the mobile device industry in general, how long will it take before these wireless devices overtake the home/wired units?