Mobile entertainment apps continue to generate good revenue for both publishers and digital content stores. Appfigures has conducted new market research that has released its Streaming App Report, which reveals that consumers around the world spent a total of $3.8 billion on mobile entertainment apps in the first quarter of this year.
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At the same time, $2.1 billion of the total amount comes from streaming applications, and another $0.9 billion was spent by users in the process of interacting with short video services such as TikTok. Spending on streaming services in the reporting period increased by 383% compared to the first quarter of 2019, the last comparable three-month period before the coronavirus pandemic, which contributed to strong growth in the mobile app market.
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Revenue for music streaming apps grew 191% over the same period, while revenue for short-form video services jumped 1,500%. Appfigures attributes such an impressive growth in short video services primarily to the large number of users who spend money on rewarding streamers on TikTok.
Appfigures data only covers mobile payments and does not cover the revenue that app developers receive from users who subscribe to a service on their smart TV or online. This is especially true with Netflix, which has long made efforts to avoid paying for digital content stores.
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The company phased out paid subscriptions in its iOS app a few years ago, and recently began notifying customers who were still paying for a Netflix subscription through the App Store that they would have to do so through other methods. This activity was not in vain, and in the first quarter of this year, Netflix brought in just $67 million in revenue to the App Store. This is half what the anime service Crunchyroll brought in during the same period. This is despite Netflix being the most downloaded app on the App Store in the first quarter.