UK Video on demand market dominated by Apple

Apple’s iTunes service has the most video content to offer customers in the UK, according to new research.

The study, carried out by digital media research consulatny Decipher, found that the Apple offers punters over 65,00 videos. This was 193 per cent larger than the next service, Xbox Video and 275 per cent larger that the largest TV-based video-on-demand service BT/YouView.

But hot on BT’s heels is Sky’s Now TV service. According to figures, the service grew 208 per cent since a year ago. But BT’s YouView box has still managed to grow its on-demand service by nine per cent and leads all other digital TV platforms, the research found. YouView’s catch-up service, boosted by the appearance of Sky Movies on the platform is now 33 per cent larger than Virgin and 50 per cent larger than Sky.

But services that offer customers the ability to own content rather than rent it dominates the supply of video-on-demand. On average, services such as iTunes and BlinkBox contain over 20,000 episodes and films. Decipher said that this is 63 per cent larger than the average digital TV service.

The UK’s most popular category of on demand, catch-up TV, is led by Sky who have grown by 50 per cent to offer 3,181 programmes; this beats BT YouView, last quarter’s ‘Catch-up King’, by 144 shows. Alongside Sky, Virgin also showed catch-up growth, expanding their offer by 37 per cent.

TV box sets has been an area of intense marketing in the UK over the past 3 months, most significantly by Sky and Netflix. However, the largest provider of box sets is in fact iTunes, with 41,547 episodes available.