In a story released today, eMarketer predicts that 33.5% of the U.S. population (approximately 110 million people) will watch video content on a mobile phone at least once a month by 2016.
This prediction includes mobile phone users who view video content through mobile browsers, subscriptions, downloads, or applications, and it’ss a significant jump from the 45.2 million Americans (14.4% of the U.S. population) who watched video content on mobile phones at least once per month in 2011.
eMarketer also predicts that mobile social networking will continue to grow, and by 2014, 33.3% of the U.S. population will visit social networking sites using their mobile phones at least once per month. That’s up from 18.7% at the end of 2011. Most of those visits are expected to go to Facebook. In fact, eMarketer estimates that the number of mobile Facebook users in the U.S. will jump from 49.4 million at the end of 2011 to 93.9 million in 2014, and 98% of those people will access the site using smartphones. In other words, not only will people consume more content via mobile devices in the coming years, but they’ll find much of that content through mobile social networking activities.
Statistics and trend analysis show us again and again that content consumption is moving more and more toward mobile devices every day. The new data from eMarketer quantifies the trend going out four more years. As new mobile devices and apps are launched in the coming years, those numbers could go even higher. For example, the vast majority of U.S. mobile device users still consume content via mobile phones. As tablets proliferate the market, there is no doubt that content consumption won’t simply shift to tablets. Instead, it’s likely that overall mobile content consumption will increase.
Recent studies by Nielsen and Digitas have shown that people have become multi-screen viewers, which means they watch television and consume content on their mobile phones and tablet devices at the same time. In short, people are consuming more content than ever, and we’re a long way from seeing mobile content consumption growth rates reaching a plateau. Mobile is not a fad, and it’s only going to get more popular. In other words, there is no stopping progress.
Is your content mobile-ready?