2010 was a pretty big year in the tech industry. But lost in the barrage of tablet news and the Great Android-Apple War was this interesting little tidbit: YouTube mobile viewership tripled in 2010.
The reason this is so surprising is that YouTube, while still hugely popular on the web, faces much more competition in the mobile video market. We've seen other video sites like Vimeo gain a lot of ground, as well as more video apps like Vevo.
Also consider the fact that streaming video subscription services have made huge strides, especially Hulu and Netflix. Okay, they may not be direct competitors, since Hulu and Netflix aren't user-generated content. However, it's still online/mobile video, and the more time users spend on subscribed streaming content like Hulu is less time that they're spending on YouTube.
The point is that a few years ago your only online video option was YouTube. And although that landscape has drastically changed over the past year, YouTube still managed to see huge growth in the mobile market.
This is also great news for content creators, because it demonstrates how multiple different mobile video channels are growing.
