Mobile to overtake TV to become first screen

YouTube’s Global Head of Content, Robert Kyncl, announced at the recent Abu Dhabi Media Summit that smartphones and tablets won’t be ‘second screens’ for much longer. He is confident that watching video content on mobile devices will soon surpass television.

Based on previous mobile traffic figures he could be right. A quarter of total video traffic on YouTube today comes from mobile, up from just 6% eighteen months ago.

The increase in watching mobile, and online, video content comes as consumers opt to watch what they want, where they want, when they want. The limited choice of television is struggling to hold their attention.

Kyncl also said that consumers would soon be syncing their use of mobile video and televisions, something the cable television companies must surely fear.

“When you’re making your selections on your phone and you’re sending them to the TV, something that is coming very soon [on a mainstream basis], when that transition is seamless, this becomes the first screen,” he told the Summit audience.