Last week I posted some data here on VOD Professional about the common functionality found in video services on iPad. This answered questions like "How many video services use content recommendation?", "How important are personalization features?" and "What functionality should I include in my organisation's new iPad video service?"

We took those figures from our VUI Library research tool which is a global study of over 180 different video services across platforms. So far, we've taken over 5,500 screenshots of video user interfaces (VUIs) and scored those products by the presence (or lack of presence) of 25 common functions that seem to appear again and again in video services all over the world.

Today, I'm going to share some of our Android tablet findings. As with our earlier article about iPad functionality, these numbers are taken from analyses we did last year. To get the most up to date data - and find out what the most recent developments are in building video services for Android tablets - you may like to consider subscribing to the VUI Library.

Functionality found in Video Services on Android Tablets

So how often do those 25 most common functions appear in VUIs on Android tablets and how does this compare to video services on iPad? You can see the full deck below - plus a bar chart comparing the two sets of devices - but here are some highlights:

• Overall, it seems that video services on Android tablets are less evolved than those found on iPad. For example, looking at content discovery and recommendation, in iPad, "Featured Content" areas are found in 98% of services. On Android, the figure drops down to 75%. Content Categorisation is found in 92% of services on iPad but only 80% on Android. 'Search' is 61% vs. 52%, 'Recently Added' is 75% vs. 55% and A-Z (of content) functionality is 31% vs. 8%. These are really interesting findings and suggest that most broadcasters and content owners think that iPad is still more important to viewers than Android tablets. As a small aside, the research firm IDC recently reported that tablet sales for 2012 were 78.4% higher than 2011 and, in total, 128m devices were sold.
   
• It's a similar story for Personalization features. iPad video services are more likely to include Favourites, Playlists and Parental Controls than Android tablet equivalents. The only measure in which Android tablets fare better is 'Social Sign-on' - the ability to use a Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn account to sign in to a video service.
   
• Indeed, only four of our 25 common functions appear more on Android tablets than iPad: 'Most Popular' content areas, 'Social Sign-on'; the ability to create video Playlists and customization of the actual video player.
   
• Support functionality is lacking on Android tablet video services. Help, About and Contact features are found in more than two-thirds of iPad services but only in just over a third of Android. Accessibility (using subtitles, closed captions etc.) which was already only intermittently available on iPad (22%) is even worse on Android (11%).

As before, I should say that this is quantitative research but we'll be adding qualitative elements soon. In other words, we'll be asking consumers exactly what they think of these different functions, how often they use them and how important they think they are.

We'll also be publishing similar data about video services on Web later this week. Register with VOD Professional and we'll keep you posted.