A recent report by Conviva about the State of Online Streaming in Q3 2021 reported that Africa saw a 273% increase in online streaming. According to the numbers reported Africa’s increase in streaming services is extensively more than the global percentage in the Q3 2021.
“Given that streaming is up 266% over the past three years and so many people predicted the pandemic lockdown period to be the pinnacle, it’s almost inconceivable that it continued to grow this quarter, up 21% over Q3 2020.
Not only that, but streaming platforms are investing heavily in video content on social media, particularly YouTube. So, it seems that streaming video – whether it’s a massively popular streaming show, a trailer promoting that show on YouTube, or a range of TikTok video fan reactions – will continue to entertain populations the world over.”
Statement by Conviva
The report covered several parameters of online streaming in Africa which included:
- Global streaming continued to increase, up 21% in Q3 2021 over the same quarter last year, led predominately by more nascent regions including Africa, which saw a massive 273% increase.
- Year over year, buffering, bitrate, start failure, and minutes per play (for the most part) made decent gains in every region. Buffering – when the video pauses during playback so it can reload – improved across the board with Africa reaping the most benefit, down 78%.
- Video start failures decreased for every region except Africa, which saw an increase of 7% for a 4.47% video start failure rate.
- Video start time was the only real outlier when it came to quality as only two regions recorded improvements, Africa at 7% and North America at 3%.
- Despite significant improvements in viewing time in Africa with a 153% increase, the region came in second to last only slightly ahead of Asia with just 13.21 minutes per play on average.
- In Africa, big screens captured 57% share while desktop and mobile were pretty evenly matched at 19% for desktop and 18% for mobile. Tablets took only 6% of viewing share this quarter.
- Africa had a much wider spread with Linux STB taking in the most share at 29% while Chromecast, Android TV, and Samsung TV followed with around 15% share each. LG TV with 8% and PlayStation and Apple TV, both with 7%, rounded out the top devices in Africa.
