Study: iPod video yet to play big
Nielsen Media Research has begun gathering its first data on the audience for Apple's iPod, calling into question the popularity of its video offering.
Owners of Apple's ubiquitous portable media device spend far more time on it listening to music or audio podcasts than they do using it to watch TV or movies. That was among the findings in an unprecedented preliminary study conducted by the audience measurement service in October about one year after a video window was introduced to iPod and its corresponding Internet platform, iTunes.
The iPod research conducted by Nielsen, which is owned by VNU Group, parent company of The Hollywood Reporter, is the first publicly available independently published data on consumption habits for the device. Nielsen monitored a panel of 400 iPod users in the U.S. from October 1 to 27 as part of its new initiative, Anywhere Anytime Media Measurement, or A2M2, which aims to measure audiences on myriad emerging digital platforms.
Among the findings: Less than 1% of content items played by iPod users on either iTunes or the device itself were videos. Among video iPod users, that percentage barely improves, up to 2.2%.
Even measured by duration of consumption, where 30 or 60 minute TV shows might seem to have a built in advantage over three minute songs, video comprises just 2% of total time spent using iPods or iTunes among iPod owners. Video iPod users consume video 11% of the time.
The study also found that 15.8% of iPod users have played a video on either iPod or iTunes. About one third of that group doesn't own a video iPod.
Nielsen's "Home Tech Report," a separate ongoing tracking of new technologies, projects about 13% of U.S. households own at least one iPod, amounting to about 15 million 30% of which are video enabled iPods. By Apple's own count, nearly 70 million iPods have been sold to date.
"To a great extent, that number is driven almost entirely by people looking to play audio," said Paul Lindstrom, senior vp custom research at Nielsen. "The real question in many ways becomes, What is the next wave?"
Nielsen declined requests to provide additional data from the study, which is believed to have also tracked consumption of specific titles. But what few figures could be obtained from the study seem to suggest that despite iPod's upgrade to video capabilities in October 2005, the device is still mainly used as an audio device.
The data could raise some profound questions about assumptions made regarding consumer behavior; specifically, whether mobile devices can truly encourage a mass audience to adopt mobile video consumption after generations of generally homebound, large screen viewing habits.
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