Nielsen Media Research has gathered its first data on the audience for Apple Computer's iPod, calling into question the popularity of its video offering.
Owners of Apple's ubiquitous portable media player 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 a 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, which aims to measure audiences on myriad emerging digital platforms.
Among the findings: Less than 1 percent 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 percent.
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 percent of total time spent using iPods or iTunes among iPod owners. Video iPod users consume video 11 percent of the time.
The study also found that 15.8 percent 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, estimates that about 13 percent of U.S. households own at least one iPod, amounting to about 15 million. Thirty percent of those are video-enabled iPods. By Apple's own count, nearly 70 million iPods have been sold to date.
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 for audio.
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.
Nielsen's take on video consumption is highly subject to interpretation. Worst-case scenario: The panel is an early indication that TV and movies have limited appeal on iPods. Best-case scenario: While adoption of video may be proceeding more slowly than the hype suggests, there is tremendous upside ahead.
Apple, which declined comment, has been relatively tight-lipped about iPod usage with the exception of select statistics: The most current count pegs sales at 1.5 billion songs and 45 million videos (derived in part from 250 series from 40 networks). In its most recent earnings call, the Walt Disney Co. noted that about 500,000 movies have been sold in the two months since the company became the only major studio to strike a film-output deal.
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