Accelerating deployment of commercial 4G-LTE networks is adding fuel to a trend of increasing mobile data usage, as the latest mobile broadband telecom standard meets subscribers’ growing appetite for viewing and sharing multimedia content. According to the 2H 2014 Citrix Mobile Analytics Report LTE mobile subscribers are 1-1/2 times more likely to watch video on their mobile devices than their 3G counterparts. And that’s just for starters.
LTE mobile subscribers are also watching longer: 76 percent of Netflix viewers on LTE watch for more than five minutes as compared to 65 percent who watch via 3G networks. They’re also watching higher-resolution content, Citrix highlights in a news release.
Mobile Video Viewership
Forty percent of mobile subscribers make use of social networks on a daily basis, making it the most popular category of mobile application. According to Citrix, video accounts for 47 percent of social networking data. Images account for another 40 percent.
Regionally, mobile subscribers in North America and the Middle East watch the most video on social networks. Social network video consumption in North America amounted to 59 percent of total volume, while that for the Middle East amounted to 62 percent of total volume, Citrix found. In Europe, video consumption accounts for 39 percent of total mobile social networking data usage, while the corresponding percentage for the APAC region is 35 percent.
Growing mobile data usage is attracting more in the way of advertising. “Half of mobile data subscribers are served ads over the mobile network and the mix of ad types is changing rapidly,” Citrix notes. Mobile video ads have increased 20 percent since the beginning of 2014, “as brands are increasingly using this medium to make their pitch rather than with traditional banner ads,” Citrix says.
In 2013, one mobile video ad was served for every 20 banner ads. This year, that ratio has increased to one mobile video ad for every 16 banner ads served.
“Providing network operators with insight into the types and volumes of content mobile subscribers are consuming helps them to identify trends in subscriber behavior and to adjust their networks accordingly,” Mark Davis, Citrix’s senior director of product marketing, Service Provider Platforms.
“The mobile data experience continues to be a key contributor to subscriber satisfaction or lack thereof. Knowledge about how the network is being used combined with the tools to enhance the mobile data experience are fundamental to establishing a differentiated data service.”
Image courtesy of flickr user bendodson.
