“Screen time is shifting towards mobile. Mobile usage is shifting towards social networking apps. And social networking apps are shifting towards video. All the trends are lining up in favor of massive growth in social-mobile (SoMo) video over the next decade,” Joel Espelien, senior analyst at The Diffusion Group observes.
Espelien is the author of a new TDG report that shows the amount of time consumers spend each week using a screen (TV, personal computer, tablet or mobile phone) now tops 50 hours. In a notable finding, the role that smartphones play in total screen time continues to expand. Per-capita use now stands at 8.6 hours a week, greater than the total amount of time consumers spend watching broadband video (8.2 hours/week). Social networking now makes up four hours of weekly screen time, of which 63 percent is spent using services like Instagram (2.5 hours/week), according to TDG.
The research firm points out that the overlap between smartphone and social network use is important, and has led to recent testing of the viability of social-mobile (SoMo) networks for video delivery. While SoMo video currently accounts for 0.13 hours per week of screen time (10 percent of smartphone use and 14 percent of total smartphone video time), TDG expects big changes around that.
TDG forecasts that SoMo video will experience massive growth over the next 10 years, up from 684 million daily viewing minutes in 2016 to 7.4 billion by 2025. As a share of total smartphone video viewing, SoMo Video will grow from 17 percent in 2016 to 43 percent in 2025, the research firm predicts.
