By Edu Lopez
The Philippines has the highest proportion in using ?torrent? sites in the Asia Pacific region at 31 percent, according to a survey by poll firm YouGov.
The survey also revealed that close to 20% of respondents in Asia Pacific (19%) admit that they use web links or ?torrent? sites to view content such as TV dramas, movies, or sponsors on their computer, tablet, smartphone or TV.
The key drivers are that it?s free of charge (49%) and that this method provides timely and up-to-date content (49%).
On average, people in Asia Pacific spend around six hours per week watching TV. However, despite the prevalence of on-demand video, over 80% of people (83%) still watch TV via broadcast TV channels, with 59% of respondents watch on-demand content via TV, 61% watch on-demand content via desktop, laptop computer, and 56% watch on-demand content via mobile devices.
Among those who have been using on-demand video streaming services in Asia Pacific, seven out of ten (72%) use YouTube, its popularity far ahead of the next ranked service providers Google Play (31%).
YouTube is ranked No.1 across Asia Pacific countries with the exception of China, where YouTube and Netflix are not available. In China, the majority of respondents use YouKu (74%) and WeChat (60%) instead.
Looking at the devices respondents use most often to watch online streaming video, 32% use smartphone, 31% use TV, 26% use PC, while only 11% use tablet.
In terms of location and connection, 8 out of 10 respondents stay at home and 65% of respondents use fixed broadband to watch online streaming video most often.
Netflix has been launched in many Asia Pacific countries earlier this year and more than half of the Asia Pacific respondents (55%) are aware of that.
However, in China, where Netflix has no plan to launch in 2016, only three out of ten respondents are aware of it. But despite high awareness across the region, 35% of Asia Pacific respondents are not sure whether they will subscribe to Netflix or not.
Twenty-six percent of Asia Pacific respondents say they will subscribe to it, only 11% of Asia Pacific respondents say they have already subscribed to the service.
The trend is quite similar across Asia Pacific countries with the exception of Australia where Netflix has been launched for a longer period of time. 34% of Australia respondents have already subscribed to the service.
In Indonesia, the Philippines, and China, over 40% of respondents in each of these countries say they will subscribe to Netflix, higher than the other countries in Asia Pacific.
On a scale of 1 to 10, consumers in Asia Pacific generally welcome the Asia launch of Netflix, scoring 7.8 on the scale, with the highest mean score found in the Philippines (8.5) and China (8.1), and the lowest mean score found in Hong Kong (7.1).
More than 3 in 5 respondents (63%) think the launch of Netflix in Asia Pacific will have a positive impact on the media industry and Pay TV operators as it allows more competition in the industry and it will trigger better quality of service provision.
And among those who have already subscribed to Netflix, 76% think Netflix provides good overseas content.
