The corporation says it saw 1.94 billion TV and radio requests across the iPlayer platform, two thirds of which came from traditional desktop computers.
In December alone, 7 million programmes were requested on connected TV sets, up 1000% year-on-year, while mobile phones and tablets recorded 13 million and 10 million requests – year-on-year increases of 163% and 596% respectively.
Connected TV’s include devices such as IPTV (BT Vision), connected "Smart TVs", set-top boxes, such as Freeview and video game consoles (such as Xbox360 and Playstation 3).
This helped BBC iPlayer register a record-breaking 187 million monthly requests across all platforms in December alone, a 29% increase on 2010.
"While 2011 was a remarkable year for BBC iPlayer across the board, the real story was growth of iPlayer on TVs, mobile phones, and tablets, outpacing PC growth many times over," said BBC’s general manager of programmes on demand, Daniel Danker.
"Having established itself as a must-have app for smartphone users and the gold-standard for TV on the go, we see huge potential for BBC iPlayer on the living room set in 2012 – the natural home for great TV – as audiences switch on to the benefits of connected TV."
While the BBC iPlayer app was released for iPad and Android devices in February 2011, it wasn’t until December 12 2011 that it was available on iPhone and iPod touch, giving the iPlayer a much needed boost through December.
It appears much of the traffic increase was driven by Christmas presents. The week of 26th December – 02 January saw a new weekly high of 29.7 million requests, with 5.4 million requests on January 2nd alone.
BBC’s Sherlock was the most-watched programme with 623,000 viewers – the most requests seen for any programme in one 24-hour period.
Top Gear was also a big driver; its Indian Special was watching 1.7 million times – the most of any program across December.
BBC did not offer a geographic breakdown of the figures, but an international version of the iPlayer app launched in July last year.
