• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer, September 15, 2014

Whatever size screen Apple is selling this year, they’re in the ballpark. Mobile screens, small and bigger, are where the viewers are headed, fast.  

According to Ooyala’s Q2 Video Index being released today, viewing via mobile devices is destined to make up more than half of all video views by 2016. That’s a little more than just 15 months away.

Mobile -- smartphones and tablets -- made up 27% of online viewing in June, up from 21%, in February. In the past year, mobile viewing has doubled to become 25% of the total.   

Ooyala is not alone in its predictions. Earlier, Cisco predicted (and Ooyala noted) that by 2018, mobile video traffic could make up 69% of the world’s Internet traffic.

This latest Ooyala report amplifies other recent data that show small-screen video is growing big -- and not just for short-length content, although that is its dominant use.  

All that go-go should keep going, it says, because of the oxymoronic trend toward larger small screens -- like the new Apple iPhone 6 and others -- that make video viewing on mobile devices better.

Oolyala also points out that there's just more video available, and faster 4G phone service is more widely available. TV Everywhere service is becoming available, well, everywhere to everyone. Ooyala says in the U.S., it’s estimated that 90% of pay-TVers can access TVE, however, as other mind-blowing stats seem to indicate that you can lead basic cable subscribers to TV Everywhere, but you can’t make them use it.

Ooyala also mentions that -- as you might have heard by now -- millennials are very comfortable about watching via mobile and tablets.

The study has some other exclamation point-worthy data: Despite all the applause for mobile devices, big TVs aren’t dead at all. Consumers with connected TVs spent 81% of their time watching video longer than 10 minutes -- a stat that includes conventional television viewing.

But tablet viewers spent 23% watching videos of between a half-hour (sitcom!) or hour long (drama) -- a larger percentage than on any other device other than a connected TV.

This report reiterates the smartphone’s function as a “snacking” video option. Those viewers spend 45% of their time watching videos less than six minutes long, but that still leaves plenty of time, surprisingly, for videos that are much longer than that.

Still, the short stuff has a good home everywhere online -- videos from 1-3 minutes long get the most play regardless of devices. On desktops, 31% of the video consumed is less than a minute long.

A playful stat in the Ooyala report compared usage on a wet week in Boston in April to usage on a sunny week in June in the same city.  

The result: Perhaps surprisingly, there were more video played in the nice June week -- including 23% more videos played on smartphones and 10% more tablet plays. But during a dreary week in April, total time spent watching went up significantly, evidenced by a 40% bump on desktops and 10% on tablets, It  down 3% on smartphones, apparently because people were spending more time inside. It’s not scientific and a lot of other factors could be at work, but...it’s interesting.

Ooyala’s stats are culled from measurement of the anonymized viewing habits and billions of viewing anayltics of of users in 239 countries. One in four Americans watch on an Oolyala player, but half of its traffic comes from outside the U.S. Publisher clients include ESPN, Caracol, Rolling Stone and Univision.