Amazon just continues to take over the world, or so it seems. The e-commerce mogul released Q1 sales reports today, and, to no one’s surprise, the company saw a lot of growth in the first three months of 2019, reporting sales were up by 17% to $59.7B. More impressive, according to the official Amazon report, Amazon Fire TV now has more than 30 million active users, which is up from the 25 million that were announced in October 2018.
Considering sales numbers from Roku back in February’s 2018 Q4 report saw that company grow by nearly 3.3 million active users to 27.1 — with expectations of $1B in revenue this year — Amazon’s growth shows the tight-knit battle between the two streaming services.
While Roku has dominated the marketplace in the United States over the past few years, today’s report shows that Amazon has seen strong growth both in the U.S. and around the world, clearly leveraging the power of Amazon’s e-commerce platform to promote its products — such as the Fire TV Stick 4K and the all-new Alexa Voice Remote, which both hit the market last year.
A few other highlights from Amazon’s report of note:
- Amazon now offers Apple Music via Alexa on Fire TV, Echo, and Sonos devices in the U.S. and U.K. In addition, Amazon announced the Apple TV app is coming to Fire TV devices.
- MLB.tv launched as a subscription on Prime Video Channels, offering Prime customers streaming access to regular season out-of-market baseball games, both live and on-demand.
- Prime Video debuted Original Series Hanna, a part high-concept thriller, part coming-of-age drama, based on the 2011 film, and announced the series was picked up for season two.
- Additionally, the film Guava Island starring Donald Glover and Rihanna, launched on Prime Video after a surprise premiere at Coachella.
Amazon’s a global powerhouse that continues to reinvent itself across a variety of industries. With these latest numbers, they have Roku in sight to try and overtake it as the largest streaming player in the U.S.