Smartphones have become dominant means for mass media in South Korea as streaming becomes a norm to watch contents, survey showed.

According to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) Thursday, 70.3 percent chose smartphone as their primary source for video versus 27.1 percent for TVs.

The number of people who viewed TVs, desktops, laptops, newspapers, and radios as an essential mass media platform all fell, according to a KCC official.

The average daily TV usage time which increased to 3 hours and 9 minutes in 2020 after the Covid-19 pandemic, also decreased slightly to 3 hours and 6 minutes last year. On the other hand, over-the-top (OTT) media service usage time increased by 4 minutes to an average of 1 hour and 20 minutes per day last year.

The rate of OTT services usage was 65.9 percent, an increase of 3.2 percentage points from the previous year of 66.3 percent. YouTube was by far the most used OTT service, with 66.5 percent, followed by Netflix with 24 percent. Traditional OTT, Tving and Wave, also each recorded 4.4 percent.

These results are related to the rise in the number of people who use paid OTT subscriptions. Those who used paid OTT subscriptions made up 34.8 percent of those surveyed, up 20.4 percentage points from the previous year of 14.4 percent.

The increase in usage of paid OTT subscriptions is most likely due to the rise in quality of OTT contents such as Netflix’s “Squid Game” which was watched by 142 million subscribers in its first four weeks as well as the increase in market competition.

By Lee Jae-chul and Susan Lee

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]