Commentary

Mobile Video More Vital Than Social Media on Cell Phones

The music and video capabilities of mobile phones are more important to prospective buyers than the social networking features, according to Comscore’s hefty new mobile report  released late last week.

“Demonstrating the importance of the ecosystem experience, smartphone owners rated selection of apps and music/video capabilities as significantly more important than the total mobile market. Meanwhile social networking features were less important, falling outside of the top purchase factors for smartphone buyers, despite the overall popularity in accessing social networking sites on mobile devices,” comScore said.

That’s an interesting finding especially given one in three mobile phone users in North America access social networks on their phones, the study said. But the higher emphasis placed on video capabilities may stem from video being a newer experience on cell phones and therefore a feature consumers specifically seek out. Meanwhile, social networking is ingrained and nearly as commonplace as texting and thus could be a feature that most buyers assume a phone can handle.

Video is expected to take off in the year ahead on mobile phones driven by 4G growth, comScore said.

“In the U.S., 4G subscribers are 33 percent more likely to watch mobile video on their smartphone than an average user, demonstrating the critical role 4G networks will play in bringing video to the small screen for mass mobile consumption,” comScore said. “Similarly WiFi hot spots continue to spring up offering mobile consumers an increasing number of opportunities to engage with mobile video on-the-go and in turn engage with mobile ads, which will be a growing component of the mobile video landscape and its monetization.”

3 comments about "Mobile Video More Vital Than Social Media on Cell Phones".
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  1. Chris Stinson from Non-Given, February 27, 2012 at 2:58 p.m.

    Consumers go where the content is. Online, on social media, on the TV, or on a Phone. But they don't go to engage ads.

  2. Jim Dugan from PipPops LLC, February 28, 2012 at 2:03 p.m.

    I want to watch live TV on my mobile device.

  3. Craig Smith from Bank, March 23, 2012 at 3:55 a.m.

    If the mobile devices offer good quality videos than obviously everybody is going to prefer that. These cell phones too are now becoming cheap enough to buy.

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