Story highlights
Survey says people watch smartphones and tablets more than TV in the bedroom
46% of respondents have used smartphones and 41% have used tablets in the boudoir
As mobile viewing increases, users want seamless experience across devices
Motorola Mobility surveyed 9,500 people in 17 countries
If you fall asleep in bed every night with the TV on, you’re apparently a dying breed.
More people now use their tablet or smartphone in the bedroom for late-night video viewing rather than switching on the tube, according to a new survey.
Motorola Mobility surveyed 9,500 people in 17 countries and found that “consumers are watching an enormous amount of video, in some surprising ways, in unexpected places.”
Among respondents, 46% said they’ve watched video on their smartphones in the master bedroom, and 41% said they’ve done so on tablets. That’s compared with 36% who said they watch TV while, or after, hitting the sack.
Motorola’s fourth annual Media Engagement Barometer doesn’t delve deeply into what sort of content people are watching in the bedroom or elsewhere (though it could be noted that the section revealing the bedroom habits is called “Multi-screen Romance”).
But John Burke, a senior vice president and general manager of Motorola Mobility’s “Converged Solutions” service, said consumers want more flexibility in how and where they watch movies and TV shows.
“They want to be firmly in control of the way they experience their videos, but they’re frustrated,” he said. “Increasingly, they’re using tablets and smartphones to view their content, and they expect this experience to transition seamlessly across their favorite programs, whenever and wherever they like.”
For example, one in 10 respondents said they watch mobile video in the kitchen. Cooking shows, maybe?
The study had some other interesting findings, not all of which were necessarily heartening, depending on your point of view.
The number of hours people said they watch TV every week almost doubled in two years: from 10 hours in 2011 to 19 hours this year. Add the five to six hours respondents said they watch movies each week, and we’re looking at more than a full day every week spent with eyeballs glued to one screen or another.
The United States led the pack, reporting 23 hours of TV and six hours of movies per week.
And the DVR revolution – a growing frustration for ratings-hungry TV networks whose ads often get skipped – was obvious. Respondents said that almost one-third of the TV they watch (29%) is recorded.
Among those who record shows, 77% said they do so because there’s another show they’d rather watch at the same time, 72% said they do it so they’ll have a digital box set of their favorite shows, and 68% said they do it so they can skip commercials – a number that jumps to 74% in the United States and 75% in the U.K.
That’s been the source of a bunch of controversy. Last year, TV networks launched a flurry of lawsuits against Dish Network over its AdHop feature, which lets users automatically skip commercials while watching recorded shows. The networks, led by Fox, NBC and CBS, claim that such features will ruin the system that finances their shows, while Dish argued that people have been skipping ads, in one way or another, since the invention of TV.
