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A big gap exists between the best and worst countries for video experience in East Asia

Of all of the global regions we analyzed in our State of Mobile Video report, East Asia definitely had the most diverse results. The western edge of the Pacific is home to countries that scored among the highest in our video experience rankings. It's also home to some countries that ranked among the lowest.

Our first-of-its-kind video experience analysis calculates a score from 0 to 100, with 100 being the best video experience possible. In the 14 East Asian countries we examined in our report, we saw a broad range of scores with Singapore rating the highest at 66.9 and the Philippines rating the lowest at 35. (For more details on how video experience is calculated, see this blog post.) That 35-point spread represents a broad range of video qualities though. Singapore's result lands it a Very Good rating, which generally indicates fast loading times and minimal stalling on video streams, even at higher resolutions. Singapore was one of only 11 countries globally to earn a Very Good mark, but Australia and Taiwan were right on the cusp with scores only a few tenths of a point shy of the Very Good cut-off of 65.

Most of the 14 East Asian countries fell in the Good-to-Fair range of scores, meaning the typical video experience was characterized by varying degrees of delay in video load times and stalling during playback. But there were a few surprises in that list. For instance, South Korea had the fastest average overall download speed of the 69 countries in our video report, yet it fell well short of the top mark in overall video experience globally. In East Asia, Singapore, Taiwan and Australia all ranked higher in our analysis by notable margins.

It would seem that download speed has little relation to video experience, and that's true in countries that have already achieved high average speeds. But in countries that are still building out LTE capacity, we found a much closer correlation between speed and video experience. In Southeast Asia, where overall download speeds are generally slower, video experience scores were low. Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam all had average download speeds at 10 Mbps or less, and those countries made up the bottom six of our East Asia video rankings. But as average speeds climbed higher, the relationship between speed and video experience became far more loose. For instance, Hong Kong's average overall download speed was only 14.7 Mbps, but its video experience score was on the same level as South Korea, New Zealand and Japan, three countries with overall speeds nearly twice as fast as Hong Kong's.

If you want to know how some of the key operators in East Asia are delivering on mobile video experience, please click on the image below and scroll through the charts for insights on mobile video experience from a sample set of countries.