Current trends in consumption of multimedia content using online streaming platforms: A user-centric survey

In its early days, consumption of multimedia content was only possible at a stationary terminal device. The music player was located at home, and had to have a physical drive. Over the last decade, there has been an enormous increase in the number of online streaming platforms. These services enable users to consume rich multimedia content on various devices. Thanks to the widespread and availability of portable devices, any person connected to the Internet can access the same content, anytime and everywhere. This fact has forced wireless technologies to put significant emphasis on supporting high-quality content and on-demand services. However, energy consumption of handheld devices along with network bandwidth limitations are still the chief bottlenecks that today's consumers face. This paper focuses on the consumption of multimedia content using mobile devices. It describes a user case study, carried out in 2019 on 150 individuals from three age groups, that is: 16-18, 19-24, and 25-35 years old, with 50 participants in each group. This survey covers the development of online streaming platforms and aims to help content providers, service providers and policy makers when designing and evaluating systems and services. (c) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.