YouTube, Netflix Dominate Online Video In North America

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Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) through its YouTube service and Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) dominate almost 50% of internet traffic in North America, according to the latest global internet phenomena report from Sandvine, provider of intelligent broadband network solutions for fixed and mobile operators.

Netflix is leading downstream application

The report found that Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) is leading downstream application in North America followed by YouTube with 31.6% and 18.6% market share in terms of downstream traffic on fixed networks.

Other companies such as Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) only accounts 1.6% and Hulu represents only 1.29% of the total downstream traffic in September. Based on the report, Amazon and Hulu lost market share compared with the downstream traffic recorded in the same month a year earlier at 1.75% and 1.38%, respectively.

In a statement, Dave Caputo, chief executive officer of Sandvince said, “For the first time ever, peer-to-peer files sharing has fallen below 10% of total traffic in North America, which is a stark difference from the 60% share it consumed 11 years ago. Since 2009, on-demand entertainment has consumed more bandwidth than experience later applications like peer-to-peer file sharing and we had projected it would inevitably dip below 10% of total traffic by 2015. It’s happened much faster.”

“This phenomena, combined with the related rise in video applications like Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) and YouTube, underscores a big reason why Sandvine’s business has grown beyond traffic management to new service creation,” added Caputo.

Netflix’s dominance took years in US

Sandvine’s report also found that Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) took almost four years to capture 20% of data traffic in the United States. In Europe, the online video streaming company accounts for more than 20% of downstream traffic on certain fixed networks in certain British territories since its launching in the region less than two years ago.

In addition, Instagram and Dropbox emerged as the leading applications in many regions worldwide. Instagram is one of the leading mobile networks in Latin America after Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) integrated video on the app. Currently, Instagram is the 7th downstream application in the region and it is a primary candidate to be included in the tiered data plans in Latin America.

Sandvine also found that P2P file sharing in North America is declining from 31% five years ago to less than 10% of total daily traffic in North America.

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