Published on: May 16, 2014
by Kevin CoupeInteresting story this morning that points to the degree to which consumption behavior has changed.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Netflix "is becoming an even bigger consumer of the Internet's peak capacity," and that new data shows that "Netflix traffic accounted for 34% of North America's downloads during the busiest hours of the day this year, up from 32% six months ago."
Those numbers dwarf number two and three: Google's share "fell to 13% from 19% six months ago. Amazon's share of peak downstream traffic ticked up to 1.8% from 1.6%."
In addition, there is a lot of concentration of traffic on the users' end: "The top 15% of Internet subscribers accounted for more than half of Internet providers' traffic."
The thing to think about here is that this is all relatively new behavior, and it replaces - or supplements - previous behavior. It is amazing the extent to which Netflix has carved out for itself a differential advantage, and is distancing itself from the competition (though that doesn't mean that the likes of Amazon and Apple won;t be fighting back).
It is an Eye-Opener.
- KC's View: