In the last five years, cable TV revenue has been slowly shrinking. And it’s not because people are watching TV less.
According to data from the 2024 Streaming App Industry Report, consumer spending on streaming apps via the App Store and Google Play has quadrupled since 2019.
Cord cutting, switching from traditional cable TV to streaming providers, has resulted in one of the hottest trends in mobile.
How much money are we talking here?
Billions!
According to our App Intelligence, consumers spent a little over $400M per quarter on streaming video apps back in 2019. Short video, led by TikTok, saw $55M in gross revenue, and music streaming apps, which were a lot hotter back then, saw around $200M.
TikTok and the short video category got a massive bump in revenue in 2022 as gross revenue rose more than 10x to $670M in Q2. It continued to rise in 2023 and ended Q1 of 2024 with $911M - the closest the category has ever been to a billion.
Music streaming also rose, but I'll spare you the journey, it nearly tripled. Great, but...
Video streaming apps generated $2.1B in Q1 of 2024. Billion, with a B. The category more than quadrupled in the same period and its apps have been perma-glued to the Top Grossing Chart in the US for long enough that there's no doubt - there's demand and it's not going anywhere.
And while it's the most the category has ever earned, the growth has been consistent with the group earning $1.6B in Q1 of 2023 and that total rising to $1.9B over the year.
What I find most interesting is that the money cable has been reported to lose aligns with the growth we see in apps. So people are not leaving cable for books but are just tossing their set-top boxes for their phones.
Note: I'm totally ignoring revenue streaming apps generated outside of the App Store and Google Play here because it's their main revenue stream.
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