Proliferation of Mobile Broadband Use Continues — But Not for Video Entertainment

10 Oct, 2011 By: Erik Gruenwedel

---

New comScore data underscores rise in smartphone and tablet use in the United States for everything except video consumption

The percentage of Americans using smartphones and tablet mini computers to access mobile content from the Internet grew 3% in August, even while that activity didn’t include much video content such as transactional video-on-demand and subscription VOD such as Netflix, according to new comScore data.

Listening to music either downloaded or streamed from playlists or subscription-based music platforms grew the most among users, up 41% in August from the same period in 2010. Watching a transactional or subscription VOD movie or streaming content did not rank among the top 10 activities.

Indeed, just 35% of respondents watched a TV show or movie on a laptop or PC in August, compared with 49% who listened to music. On a smartphone just 13% of respondents watch a movie or TV show, compared with 15% on a tablet. Another 48% of respondents said they watched a movie or TV show online at least once a month, compared with 17% and 16% daily for smartphones and tablets, respectively.

About two-thirds of tablet owners played a game on their device in September, with 23% doing so almost every day. Listening to music also was a popular activity, with 62% of tablet owners reporting listening to music downloaded from a music service and 57% reporting listening to music from a streaming or cloud-based service.

While music listening accounted for about 50 million users in August, it still barely made the top 10 mobile activities among smartphone and tablet owners. Indeed, personal and work-related email use accounted for a combined 20% of all mobile activity (and 120 million users) on the Internet.

Personal email use on a smartphone or tablet topped 81 million users, up 26% from 65 million during August 2010. Accessing weather, texting, blogging and playing games accounted for the next three most popular mobile activities, with social networking growing 37% to 72.2 million, weather search up 34% and game playing up 24%.

Meanwhile, one in four mobile device users access TV news on a tablet daily, according to the report. Another 48% of respondents access news from a laptop or desktop computer, while 28% still access news from a newspaper.

That said, 51% of tablet users view magazine content in print publications, the most popular source for magazine content consumption. By comparison, 16% of respondents reported viewing magazine content on their tablet devices, which outpaced the percentage of respondents who view it on their mobile phones at 13%.

Other top mobile content categories included playing games at 66.7 million users, accessing search (61.5 million users) and accessing maps (53.9 million users).

Tablets, which are spearheaded by the iPad, typically require a WiFi connection to access the Internet. In August nearly 10% of traffic from tablets occurred via a mobile network connection. Overall, 66% of all non-computer Web traffic (6.8%) occurred via smartphones, compared with 33% from tablets.

In August 84.5 million Americans age 13 and older owned a smartphone, representing 36.1% of the mobile population. The total smartphone audience increased by 52% year-over-year from August 2010.
 

Bookmark it: