Streaming is the trend

Watching TV, listening to the radio or watching videos over the Internet - Swiss online users are increasingly engaging in such streaming activities. A third of the online community even say they use streaming services several times a week or more. At 56.3 percent, men are still overrepresented in the streaming user group. The proportion of younger people (14 to 39-year-olds) is also above average: 4 out of 5 online users in this age category use streaming content. Among the over-40s, it is still more than half with a share of 59 percent.

The latest data from the Net-Metrix-Base 2014-1 study prove: Video content is generally more popular than audio content. Videos on video portals (such as YouTube, Clipfish, Myvideo) have by far the highest usage share among streaming users: 71 percent say they use these streaming offers several times a month or more. Streaming videos on TV broadcasters' portals (such as SRF Videoportal, ARD Mediathek or RTL Now) comes in second on the popularity scale with 62 percent. Around 2.2 million Swiss listen to web radio or live radio from the Internet several times a month or more frequently - this corresponds to a share of 59 percent of all streaming users.

For the first time, Net-Metrix also has data on device usage for streaming activities. Striking - but not surprising - is the fact that smartphones are way out in front, especially for the use of video content on video portals and web radio. Laptops are consistently popular for playing streaming content, especially videos on video portals and TV station portals: 37 percent and 22.7 percent of all streaming users respectively use such a device for this purpose. The majority of web radio listeners use a desktop PC (22.1 percent), closely followed by laptop (21.8 percent) and smartphone (21.3 percent).