Video will account for almost 70 per cent of mobile by 2021, according to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report.
The biannual research into data traffic measurements and market trends found that mobile video traffic is becoming increasingly dominant, noting a ‘significant’ increase of video traffic shares on smartphones and tablets.
Traffic is forecasted to grow by around 55 per cent annually through to 2021.
The report found that growth has been further accentuated by the increasing use of embedded video on social media and web pages.
Elisabetta Romano, vice president and head of TV and media, Ericsson, said, “Media content and its increasing connection to mobility is playing a pivotal role in the TV and media industry today; we can see this through the spread of smart, video-enabled devices and the massive explosion of streamed video content from the internet.
“While TV and video viewership is changing for everyone, it’s telling that today’s teens are driving this evolving behaviour from traditional TV viewing to streaming video on their smartphones.
“The findings of this research underline the pace of change that our industry must undergo if we are to realise the potential of the internet era of TV.”
The report found that YouTube still dominates video traffic in most mobile networks, accounting for 50-70 per cent of total video traffic for almost all measured networks.
Between 2011 and 2015, teens increased their smartphone video viewing at home by 85 per cent, whilst nearly halving their time spent watching on a traditional TV screen.
Teen usage of cellular data for smartphone usage grew by 127 per cent between July 2014 and October 2015.
