PCs remain the dominant means of viewing content on the BBC’s over-the-top TV catch-up service iPlayer, despite stellar growth from connected TVs, mobile phones and tablets.
Official figures for December show that PCs handled 157 million of the total 187 million programs requested during the month. However, the computer’s dominance is being challenged by the other devices, which each registered at least triple-digit year-on-year growth in usage.
Connected TVs registered the highest annual growth in December, with content requests up 1000% to seven million programs. Content viewed on tablets followed, growing 596% to ten million requests, while mobile phone usage hit 13 million – up 163% year-on-year.
Daniel Danker, the BBC’s general manager of programmes and on demand, predicts connected TVs will dominate growth in the coming year, “as audiences switch on,” to the benefits of the devices.
December capped a strong year for the catch-up service, which handled a record 1.97 billion requests in total.