Indians spend more time watching videos on smartphones: Study

Daily average viewing is 70 minutes; Eros Now, Netflix & Hotstar hog limelight

Hyderabad: Indians prefer to watch videos and movies on their smartphones. According to a latest study, on an average Indians spend 70 minutes a day watching a video on their smartphones. An over-the-top (OTT) viewer spends more watching videos from evening to midnight and on holidays it will be an entire day. Eros-KPMG carried out a study on habits of video watching on smartphones in India.

The report reveals that consumption frequency is 12.5 times a week. Indian smartphone users access more than three platforms simultaneously. Movies are the preferred choice of Indians on smart TV and larger screens.

Rishika Lulla Singh, CEO at Eros Digital, said, “As data and digital infrastructure becomes exceedingly accessible even in small cities in India, the market for OTT has widened enormously.”

Internet video traffic in India may reach 13.5 Exabytes (EB) per month by 2022 as against 1.5 EB a month in 2017. By 2022 video will contribute nearly 77 per cent of all Internet traffic.

Smartphone users can access more than 30 Video on Demand (VoD) platforms available in India. New players are entering the space with huge investments to build libraries of diverse original content.

Eros-KPMG in its report said, “About 96 per cent of the movie viewers preferred Eros Now as against 92 per cent for Netflix and 89 per cent for Hotstar. About 30 per cent of the respondents prefers watching movies on OTT platforms.”

For instance, Hotstar will be spending Rs 120 crore in 2019 to create exclusive shows in seven different languages for the Indian market. Eros Now will invest $50 million for creating 100 new original shows for its platform. Another major player Zee5 will release 72 new originals in six languages till March 2020.

“About 30 per cent of the respondents to our survey said they watch videos in languages other than Hindi and English. Indians prefer to watch video content in their native language. Particularly, the South Indians watch video content and movies in their native languages,” added the report.

Freshness and originality of the content are the main factors for installation and uninstallation of apps. About 87 per cent of the respondents said they install an app considering the quality of content.

About 87 per cent of the respondents in our study watch video content on their mobile phones. Over 27 per cent of the respondents said they watch content during office hours.