TV Everywhere viewing is still on the rise, but the rate of growth has slowed considerably, according to Adobe Digital Index’s latestUS Digital Video Benchmark report (PDF)
Authenticated TVE viewing was up 63% year-over-year, Adobe found in the report, which based its findings on 159 billion online video starts and 1.49 billion TVE authentications from Q2 2014 to Q2 2015. As a point of comparison, TVE usage skyrocketed 246%, when Adobe posted similar year-on-year results for Q1 2013 through Q1 2014.
“What we’re starting to see is that potentially some of the friction in the process of setting up TV Everywhere or figuring out which device you want to use might be starting to cause a slowdown,” Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst for ADI, said in a statement. “We think generally the demand is there, but we may have reached a tipping point where to get to the next level it needs to be simpler to sign in.”
ADI also found that 12.7% of pay TV viewers were watching content on their devices in Q2 2015, a 19% year-over-year gain, but down 4% from Q1 2015.
According to the report, the iPad was the top device used for TVE, with about 22% of users tapping in via Apple’s iconic tablet. That was followed by PCs (18.3%), the iPhone (18.2%), the Apple TV (12.8%), Android devices (9.1%), Macs (7.4%), Roku (6.8%), gaming consoles (2%), Amazon Fire TV (1%), and smart TVs (0.7%).
Apple devices alone accounted for up to 61% of TVE viewing, possibly paving the way for “an all-in-one solution from Apple,” she noted. A new, more capable iteration of the Apple TV is expected to be announced next week.
“It doesn’t take much for something to come along that makes everything so much easier to use that adoption goes into a hockey-stick pattern,” Gaffney said. “That could very well happen. That’s what happened with the iPhone.”
Looking beyond TVE, the primary vehicle for watching TV sites is the PC, as the platform averaged 1.68 starts per month, versus .44 for smartphones, and 0.94 for tablets.
