TV tax takers reveal Brits telly habits
3D? Meh. Mobile? Yes please
Britons now spend more time watching TV programmes after they have been broadcast. And more than a quarter of us watch TV on mobile devices, TV Licensing, the organisation that collects the Licence Fee, a television tax, said this week.
Brits together own more flat-panel tellies than any other Western European nation, even those with bigger populations, such as Germany. More than 42m flat-screen TVs were purchased between 2004 and 2010, with a further 9.3m 2011, TV Licensing's numbers, collected by pollster ICM, reveal.
We're not too bothered about 3D, though. Only 700,000 3D-capable sets were purchased last year, just 7.5 per cent of the total number of flat-panel TVs bought in the UK in 2011.
That's less than half the number of net-connectable TVs sold last year. These sets accounted for 16 per cent of the total, up from nine per cent the previous year.
Source: TV Licensing/ICM
Size remains a key buying factor: more than two-thirds of the TVs bought in 2011 were smaller than 33in.
The average UK home now has many more screens on which to watch telly than ever before. Each household has, on average, 2.3 TVs, with 1.5 laptops, 0.8 smartphones and a third of a tablet.
With 46 per cent of the UK population now owning a smartphone, it's no surprise that 39 per cent of us watched TV on a handset during 2011. But only 14 per cent watched it on a tablet.
Most of these folk would have been watching catch-up services, such as BBC iPlayer, on their mobile devices. Catch-up viewing accounted for 9.2 per cent of all viewing in 2011, up from 7.1 per cent in 2010.
Looking ahead, TV sales are expected to total 8.7m units this year, fewer than 2011, though sales have been declining since 2009. We're a conservative lot: only nine per cent of punters say they will opt for a larger size than they currently own, while only five per cent of folk are planning to buy a new TV specifically for its 3D capability. Seven per cent want a connected TV.
More Brits - 11 per cent - will buy a tablet. Ten per cent will get a new smartphone.
Finally, we were going to list the year's most popular programmes but, to be frank, it's too bloody embarrassing. If you insist, you can find the damning information at TV Licensing (PDF). ®
COMMENTS
Most-started programmes != most-watched programmes
I started watching an episode of Come Fly With Me on iPlayer once. I never made it to the end because it was so awful. Do their stats include people like me who thought "oh this looks promising" and started watching a show, but then never made it to the end? I'd quite like to see a list of top-ten shows that people actually managed to sit through.
Just more ammo..
for them converting the telly tax into a "you pay if you stream/download any video content from a broadcaster, even if it's after the show was scheduled (i.e. non real time viewing)".
Disgusting
Not only the sad bastards watch crap on TV but they also watch it on their phones!
Re: Jumping to conclusions
Maybe it was the timing of Digital Switchover compared to the quality of new LCD TVs and the age of old CRT sets?
In a country where DSO happened before ours, where people were happy with their old tubes and unimpressed by expensive shoddy early flat panels, they're more likely to just buy a cheapo add-on box and keep the telly.
With more recent DSO (like London), people will be more likely to give in a buy a new one.
I've just been through DSO and bought convertor set-top boxes because I loved the picture of my lounge CRT, and don't want to replace the kids' tellies. Only when the main set went ByeBye did I look again at new tellies, and got one (online for half the price of the local shop) that I'm delighted with (37" LED edge-lit). It was one of the few in the shop where the colours looked natural, standard def was well handled, the viewing angles were OK, etc).
Glad I didn't go bigger, you can start to see the imperfections if I move forwards in my chair... I got the size just right for me!
Those statistics are backwards surely?
In 2007 there were 2.17 TVs per house, now 2.34 - an increase of 0.17 (normal to take the datum as the original value is it not, rather than the final value?) an 8% increase not 7%
Look at the smartphone - was 0.28, now 0.77 - an increase of 0.49 (from a start point of 0.28) - I make that 175% increase... not 64%
Similarly tablet 0.18 to 0.33 - that would be an 83% increase not 45% & Laptop 0.95 to 1.51 - (59% not 37%)
