• When It Comes To Mobile, 78% Of Web Video Is Encoded To Play On Apple Devices

    Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

    Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to a thriving... → Learn More

    encoding iOS vs. Android
    encoding iOS vs. Android

    As tablets and phones with touch screens proliferate, more and more people are watching videos on mobile devices. But any website with video must decide which devices to support and encode their video to play on different phones and tablets. According to Encoding.com, which encodes about a million videos a month for everyone from MTV to PBS, nearly 78 percent of its customers encode their mobile video to play on Apple iOS devices (iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches), whereas only 4 percent encode specifically for Android devices. The remaining 18 percent encode for the 3GP format, which is used by feature phones.

    This data is based on which preset options Encoding’s customers choose. It doesn’t mean that only 4 percent of videos will play on Android devices (which after all support Flash, MPEG-4, and 3GP), but that only 4 percent of Encoding’s customers bother to select the Android preset, which provides the optimal viewing experience on those devices. Whereas choosing the Apple presets is pretty much the default right now, and as noted earlier, iOS was embraced rather quickly. Encoding’s 1,400 customers are fairly representative of video producers across the Web, spanning media, advertising, retailers, and developers.

    Encoding CEO Jeff Malkin suspects that the Android numbers will go up with its recent market share gains, and cautions that these numbers are usually a lagging indicator of consumer usage. Generally video creators want to see major traction before targeting a specific set of devices. On mobile, iOS rules right now, but Android is rising quickly.

    Across the Web as a whole (not just mobile), the H.264 format continues to make gains, while Windows Media (WMV) has dwindled down to 1.2 percent of all encodes. Malkin sees “a mass migration away from WMV occurring.”

    Company: Encoding.com
    Website: encoding.com
    Launch Date: September 1, 2008
    Funding: $3.25M

    Encoding.com, the world’s largest video encoding service, powers video transcoding for 3,000+ companies, including leading brands across media and entertainment, eLearning, retail, telecommunications, lifestyle and advertising. Blending an affordable SaaS model with sophisticated integrations on the AWS and Rackspace cloud computing platforms, Encoding.com enables publishers and developers to instantly scale without expensive video infrastructure investments. Encoding.com supports ALL popular web and mobile formats utilizing Encoding Intelligenceâ„¢ to accelerate processing and optimize display on any device. ...

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