Founded in 2005, Penthera Partners is an international company that develops and deploys software products that facilitate the delivery of video content for global providers, eliminating lag, buffering, and streaming problems. In addition, Penthera is constantly conducting original research and finding new data about the mobile video industry.
In its last “European Mobile Streaming Behavior Survey,” for example, the company highlighted changing attitudes and behaviors towards streaming and download technology across Europe, and it found out that European respondents are enthusiastic about mobile streaming: 46% stream daily and 27% stream weekly.
However, Penthera also discovered that 85% of European consumers have experienced streaming frustrations, including video re-buffering (52%), followed by the video taking too long to start (49%), and the advertisements being annoying (48%).
“Consumers are really frustrated with streaming video. We remove all of those problems with downloads. If you download a movie or a TV show in advance, which usually takes just a few minutes to do, then you do not have to worry about having a good connection; it just works,” Daniel Taitz, President and COO of Penthera, told Señal News.
Taitz emphasized in the importance of downloading content to improve the viewing experience. Penthera’s “Download2Go” solution enables app users to download videos to their mobile device of choice to watch in high quality when and where they want, regardless of connectivity.
“What consumers are coming to learn is that in a world which is very constrained because so many people are working from home, and their wi-fi maybe is not ready to tolerate so many devices and so much usage, downloading something to watch it later creates a great experience, without worrying about buffering, lagging or any of the other problems,” Taitz explained.
Although it seems that people have little tolerance for streaming problems, they have no problem about viewing content from the small screen of their mobile devices, even when they also have the option of viewing content on a larger screen.
“Most mobile viewing is on phones, which now are bigger than they were a couple of years ago, but they are still small. The reason of that is because smartphones are the personal device that we carry with us the whole time, and they still provide an enjoyable experience,” the executive analysed. “We call it ‘the screen of convenience’: people watch on the screen which is next to them. Whether is at home or on the road, watching on mobile devices is a very satisfying experience,” he added.
The President and COO of Penthera also referred to the streaming landscape and talk about the best strategies to get and retain users in a time when competitiveness is greater than ever. “There are multiple things you need to do. The streaming video business is extremely competitive right now. It all starts with great content, which does not have to mean the most popular movies in the world. It can be some niche content. As long as you have content that resonates with an audience, that is step one,” he said.
Then, Taitz considers it is all about a great user experience, which includes an easy discovery of the content. “You need to help your users to discover the content. A lot of consumers are struggling with that. We used to turn on a television and scroll through the channels. That worked well when we had five or six channels, but nowadays is not even possible, so discovery of content is a real issue,” he added.
Lastly, to sum up, Taitz commented: “People are discovering in this pandemic that download is a great tool for many use cases. When it first came out, people thought it was great to watch content on a plane. However, consumers now want to download all the time, because it gives them a better experience”.
By Federico Marzullo
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