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Netflix keeps its lead in streaming video use at home, YouTube rules the road

When we last checked in with Sandvine's stat trackers, Netflix reigned supreme in online video traffic at home, especially downstream. It's still sitting pretty several months later, Sandvine tells AllThingsD. Quite possibly helped by the House of Cards debut, Netflix kept a healthy lead at 32.3 percent of downstream use on wired networks this past March. That's no mean feat when some of its competition took big strides forward -- YouTube jumped up to 17.1 percent, and Hulu likely rode sweeps season to get 2.4 percent.

In mobile, it's a different story. Netflix use on cellular almost doubled to 4 percent, but YouTube kept an uncontested lead at 27.3 percent of downstream use. It's not hard to see why after looking at other video formats people prefer on the road: raw HTTP video (19.2 percent) and Facebook (8.6 percent) were the next-closest, which suggests that many still grab snack-sized videos on their phones instead of full movies or TV shows. We don't expect the status quo to budge much in the near future, whether it's on mobile or a fixed-line. Without major initiatives from veterans or the arrival of a new upstart, it isn't clear just what would rock the boat.