MUMBAI: Sixty-two per cent of consumers use social media while watching TV on a weekly basis, an increase of 18 percentage points in one year, says Ericsson ConsumerLab’s annual study presented in the TV & Video Consumer Trend Report 2012.

By gender, 66 per cent of women engage in this behaviour, compared to 58 per cent of men. Twenty-five per cent of consumers use social media to discuss what they are watching while they are watching it.

Ericsson ConsumerLab Senior Advisor Niklas Rönnblom says, "Mobile devices are an important part of the TV experience, as 67 percent of consumers use smartphones, tablets, or laptops for TV and video viewing. Furthermore, sixty percent of consumers say they use on-demand services on a weekly basis. Watching TV on the move is growing in popularity, and 50 percent of the time spent watching TV and video on the smartphone, is done outside the home, where mobile broadband connections are facilitating the increase."

Although viewing behaviours and demands are changing, only 7 per cent of consumers say they will reduce their TV subscriptions in the future. In fact, instead of looking to cut costs, consumers are willing to pay more for an enhanced viewing experience: 41 per cent of consumers say they are willing to pay for TV and video content in HD.

More than half of consumers want to be able to choose their own TV and video content. Rönnblom says: "As the number of screens and services increase, people are eagerly looking for an easy-to-use, aggregated service that can bring everything together. It should allow consumers to mix on-demand and linear TV including live content, facilitate content discovery, leverage the value of social TV and provide seamless access across devices."

Data was collected in Brazil, Chile, China, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, UK and the US. In all, 14 qualitative and 12,000 quantitative online interviews were conducted representing more than 460 million consumers.

Ericsson ConsumerLab gains its knowledge through a global consumer research programme based on interviews with 100,000 individuals each year, in more than 40 countries and 15 megacities - statistically representing the views of 1.1 billion people. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used, and hundreds of hours are spent with consumers from different cultures.