Beyond Digital – Connecting media and entertainment to the future « A Smarter Planet Blog
By Saul Berman, Global Strategy Consulting Leader, IBM Global Business Services
The much heralded “connected consumer era” is no longer on the way; it has arrived. And as connectedness pervades our daily lives, we continue to crave even more. For example, a recent journal reported that people check their smart phones an average of 34 times per day, and more video is updated to YouTube in one month than the three major U.S. networks created in 60 years.
Recently IBM’s think tank, the Institute for Business Value, put on its anthropologist hat and surveyed more than 3,800 consumers in six countries (China, France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US), compiling our findings in a new study called “Beyond Digital.”
Here’s some of what we uncovered:
- Four new types of content consumption behaviors (Viewing on Demand, Non-Linear Viewing, Mobile Viewing and Social Consumption) Also known as “time-shifting,” Viewing on Demand is now the norm – especially in the UK and the U.S. where more than half of the early adopters and mainstream consumers access online video whenever it suits their schedules through sites such as Hulu and Netflix, or via video on demand services through their home TVs.Three fourths of the adultswe surveyed are “Non-Linear Viewers,” admitting to surfing the web and texting while watching television. Mobile Viewing is also gaining traction, with more than 50 percent of early adopter and mainstream consumer respondents in Japan, the UK and the U.S. regularly accessing content on their smart phones or other portable devices. Social Consumption is also on the rise: across the global sample, 46 percent fall in this category — using digital content to communicate socially (via Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.).