Conviva: Apple TV leads growth as streaming viewing hours ramp up dramatically

Growth in viewing time on Apple TV devices in the first quarter of this year outpaced all other devices by almost two times, according to data analytics outfit Conviva’s All-Screen Census Report Q1 2018.

According to statistics from Conviva’s customer base, Apple TV saw 709% increase in viewing hours year-on-year in Q1. During the same period, viewing on Roku devices grew by 87%, while its share of total viewing times dropped by 3%.

Apple TV accounted for 5.4% of all hours viewed, still some way behind Roku’s 23.1%. Amazon Fire TV, which accounted for 5.7% of hours viewed, saw year-on-year growth of 411%.

Overall, viewing hours of internet-delivered video across mobile, connected TVs and desktop screens grew by 114% in the first quarter over the same period last year, with the total number of viewing hours reaching close to five billion.

That figure compares with 12.6 billion hours recorded for all devices over the entire course of 2017, as measured by Conviva’s 2017 OTT Streaming Market Year in Review report published in January.

While Apple TV outpaced other devices in terms of viewing hours, for mobile viewing Android grew two and a half times faster than iOS devices, according to the report. Android viewing hours increased by 243% to account for 16.5% of total hours viewed, while iOS hours viewed increased by 80% to account for 11.3%.

App-based plays in general grew four times faster than browser-based viewing oin PCs, with the number of viewing hours on apps growing 136% year-on-year.

Conviva found that North America continued to drive growth in internet streaming viewing in the quarter, reporting 174% growth in viewing hours.

Conviva’s report noted an improvement in the quality of the streaming experience. The proportion of videos that failed to start in Q1 2018 was 2.34%, less than half the figure for the same period last year. Average bit-rate in Q1 2018 reached 4Mbps across all devices, a 29% improvement on the same period last year.

Conviva’s report found 765 million publisher-branded applications across unique devices in Q1, up 6%, while the number of plays grew by 98% to over 14.5 billion. The number of peak concurrent plays – the peak number of simultaneous plays at any given second – reached 5.49 million, up 70%.

Conviva measures viewing hours on close to three billion devices for over 200 global OTT publisher-branded applications.