Recent reports suggest that Google's video streaming service, YouTube, is gaining high popularity with mobile device owners. Google said that nearly half of YouTube's traffic now comes from mobile device users.
Smartphones and tablets have become very popular in the last few years. Moreover, Internet usage on smartphones and tablets has also increased rapidly as consumers can access websites on the go. More people are now viewing YouTube from their mobile devices.
Recent data suggest that 40 percent of YouTube traffic comes from mobile devices, while the video streaming service had only 25 percent traffic generated via mobile devices in 2012. In 2011, only 6 percent mobile users accessed YouTube.
The shift from desktop usage to mobile device usage has been felt very prominently in the market. The demand and usage of smartphones and tablets have grown very swiftly, which is giving stiff competition to desktops.
YouTube, however, is not the only online service to gain popularity in the mobile device arena. Other online services such as social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and more are also getting a lot of increased usage on mobile devices.
"To put its transition in perspective, Facebook said it had 819 million monthly mobile users (73%) out of its total 1.15 billion users in Q2 2013, up from 543 million (56%) of 955 million in Q2 2012, 325 million (43%) of 739 million in Q2 2011, and 155 million (32%) of 482 million in Q2 2010. Note these people used Facebook mobile at least once, but may also have used desktop. Facebook doesn't share what total percentage of usage comes from mobile, but 41% of its ad revenue comes from phones and tablets, up from 30% in Q1 2013, 23% in Q4 2012, and 14% in Q3 2012," reports Tech Crunch.
To attract even more mobile customers, YouTube has recently announced that a new feature will launch its mobile apps, which will enable viewers to watch videos even when not connected to the Internet. YouTube confirmed that it will release an update of the new feature in November.
It will be interesting to see if YouTube's new feature will attract even more people to use it on mobile devices.
