Man, what do we all like online video? According to the Sandvine Global Internet Phenomena Report Global Internet Phenomena Report it is now so far that almost 60 percent of all data collected by consumers worldwide is meant to watch video. If you think that the biggest provider of all that video is YouTube then we are in the same boat, but it is not true: Netflix is the largest with 15 percent of all downstream data.
Worldwide this is followed by ‘HTTP media streams’, which is not so much a service as the method by which the video is viewed. That is a repository where all other video services are thrown in, so that does not really count. In the same category is ‘Raw MPEG-TS’, because that is used by providers to send TV channels and other content to their users.
In Europe, YouTube wins
Then YouTube is the real second with 11.5 percent of the global data. In any case, YouTube is the dominant application when it comes to mobile streaming and, of course, a lot of YouTube material is also used as the embedded video on other websites. If you are only going to watch videos in videos, YouTube will win it, but Netflix video will be watched in higher resolution more often and use more data.
In Europe, more data is spent looking at YouTube. It is striking that Amazon Prime is also slowly but surely starting to come. In the some European countries, the share will certainly be small, but internationally (also within Europe) the service is increasingly being looked at.
Gimme that data baby
If you look at the rest of the bandwidth that is used, a number of things also stand out: gaming is huge in terms of bandwidth, because although the global top ten reports only the downloads of PlayStation Network, gaming on all platforms accounts for around eight percent of all data. For comparison: all social media come together just over five percent.
You can see how big the difference is with for example audio services like Spotify, Apple Music and the rest. They collect just one percent of the downloads, just to indicate to what extent video is taking over the web. The report is interesting, but unfortunately only tells a small part of the story. The number of bits transmitted that a service picks up does not necessarily say anything about its use or popularity, but it’s nice to put the consumption in perspective and let’s be honest – in the case of Netflix it’s also a bit.