Sensor Tower: mobile users spent an estimated $1.27B in the top 10 US streaming video apps in 2018, up 62% from $781M spent in 2017 and 3x the spending in 2016
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes out a run of Sensor Tower spending reads: earlier in 2018 the firm found US iPhone users averaged $58 each on in-app purchases in 2017, with entertainment the fastest-growing category after lifestyle. The new figure puts a number on just one slice of that — the top 10 US streaming video apps — and shows their in-app revenue tripling in two years.
It also marks the start of a measurable arc: by 2021 the top 100 non-game subscription apps were pulling $18.3B globally, and by Q1 2024 Appfigures counted $2.1B spent on streaming apps in a single quarter worldwide. The 2018 datapoint is where streaming became visible as a distinct engine of app-store revenue rather than a footnote inside 'entertainment.'
First-order effects
- The top 10 US streaming video apps took in an estimated $1.27B through in-app purchases in 2018, up 62% year over year — direct revenue that flows through Apple's App Store and Google Play, which take their standard cut.
Second-order effects
- Growth this steep pushes every major streaming service to treat mobile as a primary subscription funnel rather than a companion screen, since sign-ups initiated in-app convert into recurring platform-taxed revenue.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, subscription video helps shift app-store economics away from games' historical dominance — a shift the corpus later confirms as non-game categories scale into tens of billions annually.
The trend: Mobile app-store revenue is steadily rebalancing from games toward subscription services, with streaming video emerging as one of the fastest-compounding non-game categories.