BBC iPlayer mobile and tablet traffic reaches new high

The BBC said that mobile and tablet traffic accounted for a record high of 37% of programme requests to its iPlayer catch-up service in October.

According to the BBC’s October iPlayer performance pack, mobile device requests were almost in line with PC viewing, which accounted for 39% of iPlayer traffic.

Overall in the month, the BBC logged 261 million iPlayer requests – up 23% compared to the same time last year.

TV requests accounted for 199 million requests, the third highest figure ever recorded on the service, with radio show streams accounting for the rest of the traffic.

Bad Education and Some Girls, the first BBC Three comedies to premiere on the iPlayer – were among the most watched shows in the month, with other BBC shows also rating highly including The Great British Bake Off, The Wrong Mans, Atlantis and Waterloo Road.

“The profile of BBC iPlayer users has evened out over time in terms of male/female ratio, but remains strongly under-55 in terms of age, which is younger than the typical TV viewer or radio listener’s profile – although more in line with home broadband users,” said the BBC.

The corporation said that the catch-up service was used for TV at roughly the same time of day as linear TV viewing, though there is “proportionally more daytime and late-peak use.”

In October there was an average of 7.8m daily requests, with weekly requests peaking in the first week of the month and the last week of the month at 57m.