Billy Tompson: The iPlayer's future is mobile, says BBC

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The iPlayer's future is mobile, says BBC

iPlayer's arrival on iPad and smartphones has seen a boom in mobile use of the service

Since joining the BBC as head of its on-demand programming in September last year, Daniel Danker has overseen four record-breaking months of iPlayer viewing ? adding almost 50m new catchup requests in that time.

The man from Microsoft can't take all the credit ? a major advertising campaign for the online video player coincided with Danker's arrival ? but with new apps for Apple's iPad and Android smartphones released last week, the rise and rise of the iPlayer is showing no signs of tailing off.

More than 162m requests were made for iPlayer programmes last month, a 12% increase on December and a 35% jump on January 2010. Just over 100m of these requests were made online ? but for Danker, the future is mobile. "The ratio of growth we're seeing [of mobile viewing] is incredible," he said.

Before last week's release of iPad and Android apps ? 54,511 of the iPad apps were downloaded in the first 24 hours ? mobile viewing accounted for 5% of all iPlayer streaming, up from 1% in January 2010.

"I'm not a betting man, but if I was then I'd bet that this will continue to grow. It's about to really climb. The share of how people are viewing TV [via the iPlayer] will look meaningfully different at the end of this year," Danker said.

The three-year-old iPlayer is credited with popularising catchup TV in the UK. The iPlayer's availability on other platforms ? including Virgin Media's set-top box, and the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii gaming consoles ? have modestly increased its demand.

But the launch of new iPlayer apps tailor-made for the iPad and high-end Android handsets is expected to herald a steep rise in viewing from those devices.

Over Christmas, growth in mobile use of the iPlayer outpaced PC growth by more than two to one, and growth on tablets outpaced PCs by more than 20 to one. Streaming from Android phones boomed 228% in the 24 hours after that app launch last week; iPad viewing jumped 111% in the same period.

"This gives us a really clear signal where things are headed," Danker said. The increase in viewing away from the PC and outside the living room is nurturing what he called "an expansion of primetime".

"When the traditional primetime ends and families do different things ? some go to sleep, some leave the living room, others do work ? what happens is that people go into their bedroom and are watching on their tablets or on their mobile. That's super interesting to us," Danker said.

"But people are obviously also interested in using the iPlayer outside of the home, which is a motivating statistic because it shows that it's not just a utility, but continues to drive innovation."

The next versions of the iPlayer "will be incredibly connected and rich when disconnected", he added, referring to streaming on mobile data connections, away from Wi-Fi, and offline viewing, via downloads. Future releases will also increase the shareability of BBC programming and a long-awaited debut on Microsoft's Xbox console.

"I'm trying to hold back on instincts to build everything in the next year or so, because audience feedback will develop over time. But our intention is to make this available in as many places as possible, to audiences of scale," he said.

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