The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has released the results of a study that finds Australians have openly embraced subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) since services were launched in the first half of 2015.
The survey found that 17 per cent of Australians have already tried SVOD services like Stan, Presto, Netflix or Quickflix in the six months to June 2015, while a staggering 14% have used Netflix. Users of SVOD services also tend to be younger (33% of 18-34 year-olds surveyed have used subscription streaming, compared to 11% of 35+ year-olds) and that a subscription is found more commonly in homes with children (34% of people living in a household with children are SVOD users, compared to 17% of those who live in a household with no children).
When asked why people signed up to SVOD, 49% said the on-demand nature of these services, allowing users to watch what they want when they want to, is what drove them to make the switch. 44% also cited a great choices of content, while 21% said the low cost and the lack of a long contract was most attractive for them.
And people who have a SVOD subscription are likely to use it frequently, with 21% watching more than 10 hours of content per week.
While most of Australia's SVOD services cater for the tablet/mobile user extremely well with well designed and functional apps, most users still prefer watching SVOD content on big screen TVs. 59% said they watch SVOD content on TVs, compared to just 21% who say they've viewed content on a tablet.
As for the technical quality of streams, most Australians who've tried one of the SVOD services say they're satisfied (78%), with 40% saying they were very satisfied. But users were still encountering technical problems, with 55% saying they encountered such a problem during the last week to June 2015.
