Airtel’s mobile TV viewership soars 400%

Mumbai: Mobile television registered a 400% growth rate in viewership for the country's largest telco as more Indians watched TV on the go, said an annual study by Bharti Airtel, which maps consumer trends over mobiles. With an increasing number of bigger screened smartphones being sold at cheaper prices and data charges being lowered substantially this year, most telcos saw frenetic growth in internet over mobile.      Airtel's Hello Tunes service clocked 120 million downloads, signalling the popularity of music consumption over the mobile, said Airtel Mobitude 2013, the findings of which were shared exclusively with TOI.      The growth in mobile TV has helped push mobile-only content and mobile-focused aggregators of video content such as nexGTv's app, Vuclip and Ditto TV.      Entertainment as a category witnessed 800% more viewership over sports and 200% over news, said the report. Airtel Re 1 entertainment store, which was launched earlier this year, contributed to increased data usage, the company said. The number of data users jumped 124% from last year and data consumption increased 220% with music, image and gaming leading the download chart in the store.      Govind Rajan, chief marketing officer (customer business) at Bharti Airtel, said, "This year's verdict shows that mobile TV has witnessed the highest traction in viewership, establishing the fact that customers are now catching up on TV shows on the move. Data usage continues to grow at a fast pace." The Airtel Entertainment Store brings video to its subscribers at Re 1.      Vodafone, too, saw its data subscribers move up to 42.5 million — about 27% of its overall customer base as of September this year. What was significant is that data browsing contributed 30% of the overall growth in the first half of FY14 with 3G now contributing around 50% of growth, the telecom operator said.      A report from Mumbaibased financial advisory firm Avendus Capital said players such as Vuclip, a mobile-focused aggregator of video content, have seen their user base grow to 45 million globally, a third of which is based in India. It delivers over 25 million videos to its users on a daily basis. "The focus for carriers is on driving video consumption that provides an optimal experience across the increasing penetration of low-cost smartphones on networks that are getting hit by more and more data (almost 50% of all data on mobile networks worldwide, including India, is already video)," said Nickhil Jakatdar, CEO and founder of Vuclip.  DATA USAGE GROWTH ZOOMS  87% of data traffic came from 3 G-enabled de evices  Use of 5.5-inch plus screen jumped 123% in the last two quarters  Google continues to be the most visited site in terms of unique users followed by YouTube and Facebook  The Re 1 entertainment ment store popular in rural India with music, image and gaming trending on it Religious Reli content also trend in image downloads  Sachin Tendulkar topped mobile downloads, up 124% over last year  Mythology-inspired kids gaming trended with about 130% more downloads than cricket  Data consumption jumped 220%, driven by two-fold increase in smartphone users and a 124% jump in data users