Anime Earns Big on the App Store

Streaming apps are somewhat of an easy go-to on This Week in Apps because it's an area of the store that's only been taken seriously fairly recently as covid locked many of us down, and we're getting a front-row seat to how companies are trying to win the race.

All of the streamers I talk about regularly have a broad catalog of content. Disney+ is somewhat of an exception, but it's Disney content so it's pretty broad.

Crunchyroll is a good example of exactly the opposite, and it's doing pretty well!

Crunchyroll, in case you aren't familiar, is a streaming app for anime. Just anime. Nothing else.

The app was launched all the way back in 2009 and was acquired by Sony in 2021.

Its revenue has been on an up-and-to-the-right trend for a very long time now. This year alone, Crunchyroll's monthly net revenue from the App Store grew 17%, from $14.9M in January to $17.8M in April. And that's net, meaning what Sony gets to keep after giving Apple its share.

Crunchyroll has already earned $74M of net revenue from the App Store this year, more than 64% of what it earned in all of 2022, which was a great year in terms of revenue, and we're not even at the half-point yet.

I expect to see more niche streamers rise as streaming becomes the most popular way to consume content.

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