Philip Houska In the period when Apple introduced multitasking on iOS 9, there was an app MLB.com At Bat from the organization that oversees the operation of the top baseball league in North America, one of the first to adapt to this update. Now, the MLB organization has published interesting numbers that show that multitasking has significantly increased the amount of time people watch live on iPads through the app.
The main reason for this increase is the fact that baseball fans can watch live broadcasts of their favorite teams even when they need to do something else on their iPad. iOS 9 on newer iPads makes it possible to watch video only on part of the display, in the form of a split screen (Split View), or in the so-called picture-in-picture mode.
According to information from the MLB organization, fans spent twenty percent more time watching live broadcasts during the first two weeks of the season than last season, when multitasking on the iPad did not yet work. But that's not all.
Fans who watched games through the app and took advantage of the new multitasking experience spent an average of 162 minutes a day watching baseball. That's a whopping 86% more time than last year's daily average time spent watching baseball on the app.
These results prove that live streaming viewing is increasing due to multitasking. So far, only MLB has released such numbers, but it can be expected that other organizations will join in with interesting numbers. There is no doubt that watching in this form greatly facilitates the consumption of content as such.
Users don't need to constantly switch from app to app, but can for example shrink the stream, place it in the corner of the screen and have their favorite match (or whatever) as a backdrop while they do other work.
