Mobile Overtakes Television in Media Consumption

People in the UK will spend more time consuming media via smartphones and tablets than via television for the first time in 2014.

Recent studies have found that on average, UK adults will be spending around eight and a half hours consuming media every day in 2014. Of the eight and a half hours, it is projected that at least three hours and forty minutes will be spent by UK adults on online, with non-voice mobile activities, via a mobile device, compared to three hours and fifteen minutes spent consuming media via television.

This shift with in the way that we British consume digital media – which includes everything from playing games, checking and watching videos online – has been driven by the huge growth of mobile penetration, particularly from smartphones and tablets. The amount of time that we are spending on desktop PCs and laptops, has begun to plateau and will shortly begin to fall. With this the time spent on mobile devices will come to represent more than half of the average online media consumption as well as around half of all media consumed in 2014.

This is also inclusive of simultaneous media consumption, or second screening, which is when someone is using a mobile device whilst watching television and therefore counts as an hour per individual device.

The vast majority of time spent consuming mobile digital media is using a smartphone, which is on average around an hour a day, with tablets not too far behind. Smartphones have tended to have a higher level of time spent on them as key mobile activities, such as text messages, emails, social networking and gaming are all time consuming activities for people.

Gaming and video media consumption, are two activities which are deemed as time consuming and are more commonly untaken by tablet users, which is accounting for the increase in the level of media consumption via tablets. However this increase is relative, in comparison to smartphones due to the slow pace of tablet penetration in the UK, which is only around 38%.

This is another example showing us how the mobile landscape is slowly but surely transforming the way that we consume media and information. The mobile industry is expected to grow by 1000% between now and 2015 the ever developing mobile market shows no signs of slowing down.