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# Mobile Video’s Mixed Bag: Promise vs. Progress
- URL: https://www.hypebot.com/mobile-videos-mixed-bag-promise-vs-progress/
- Published: 2009-09-25T10:24:08.000Z
- Updated: 2009-09-25T10:24:08.000Z
- Description: A new Nielson study "The State of Mobile Video: Promise vs. Progress" concludes that at its current 6.5% penetration level, it’s easy be pessimistic about mobile video. But with 70%. Continue reading [https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/09/mobile-videos-mixed-bag-promise-vs-progress.html]
- Author: Bruce Houghton
- Tags: Apps, Mobile & SMS, YouTube & Video, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-01-21 11:03

A new [Nielson](http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/?ref=hypebot.com) study "The State of Mobile Video: Promise vs. Progress" concludes that at its current 6.5% penetration level, it’s easy be pessimistic about mobile video. But with 70% year over year growth, it may be wiser to be a cautious optimist. 

[![Mobile video](http://hypebot.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e20120a599649b970b-300wi "Mobile video")](http://hypebot.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451b36c69e20120a599649b970b-popup?ref=hypebot.com)

According to the analysis, mobile video is a transformational technology that will require real shifts in consumer behavior. So while mobile video may have a long way to go before having a dramatic impact, when it does – "when mobile video adoption further dissolves barriers of video’s time and place" – the beneficiaries will be those who participated in its evolution, concludes the study.

**Some highlights from the report:**

  
**Glass Half-Full – Mobile Video’s Best Year Ever**

- Reach, up 70 percent year over year, crossed the 10 million active viewer mark in 2008 and kept going – up to 15.3 million active viewers as of Q2 2009 (that’s roughly 7% of all US mobile subscribers)
- With “All You Can Eat” mobile data packages and increased access to mobile video over the mobile Web, access to mobile video content is more affordable than ever. A subscriber with a data package that includes video now pays $5.73 a month, on average, compared to $8.32 a year ago. Meanwhile, most mobile video viewers today aren’t even paying for a special package, but instead access mobile web through mobile Web access, simplifying the means to mobile video
- Though average subscription cost of mobile video is down, added reach still helped carriers claim a record $308 million in mobile video subscriptions in Q2 2009, up 11% compared to the prior quarter

**Glass Half-Empty – Many phones not answering the call**

- Half of U.S. mobile subscribers still carry phones that aren’t even capable of viewing video (52%), that’s just a marginal improvement over two years ago (62%). The adoption rate of mobile-video capable phones slowed as the economy weakened
- Among mobile video viewers, satisfaction with the overall experience went down over the last year (74% in Q2 2008 to 65% in Q2 2009). Even more troubling, consumer satisfaction decreased around undeniably improving components such speed, reliability, content, price and general audio and video quality
- The mobile video audience is churning quickly. Disproportional to year-over-year audience growth, today’s mobile video audience is made up mostly of viewers still in their first year of use (78%). Since its introduction, the adoption rate of mobile video has been governed by a revolving audience of mobile video “testers,” viewers who try out the medium for under a year and then ditch it. Mobile video today still lacks the stickiness it needs for more rapid growth.

A mixed bag for sure, but no matter your take on mobile video, today, it’s hard to deny that a confluence of factors — better devices, faster networks, dedicated programmers, consumer interest – prime the pump for the broader, if bumpy, adoption of the platform. In short, the catalysts for growth are now in place.

**A different kind of growth**

Perhaps adoption of mobile video may look more like the gradual, linear adoption of DVRs than the exponential growth of portable MP3 players and the similarity wouldn’t be a coincidence. DVRs and mobile video are analogous in their transformational nature: technologies that fundamentally alter the time or place of media consumption. That’s a very distinct evolution from a technology such as the MP3 player, which did not change the time or place of the portable CD player, but simply refined the user experience of that medium – thus the adoption of the MP3 player was a logical adoptive progression for the consumer. The extent to which mobile video asks consumers to fundamentally alter their consumption patterns should not be understated.