Roku Hits 36.9 Million Active Accounts, Execs Say ‘We Have Now Entered the Streaming Decade’
Roku is continuing its steady growth. As part of their Q4 2019 earnings report, the company announced today they now have 36.9 million active accounts. This is up from the 32.3 million active accounts they reported in the third quarter.
“Engagement with our platform continued to grow as Roku users streamed 11.7 billion hours in the quarter, an increase of 60% year-over-year,” Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku, and Roku CFO Steve Louden said in a statement. “This contributed to a record 40.3 billion streaming hours during 2019, a 68% year-over-year increase.”
In comparison, Amazon surpassed 40 million active Fire TV accounts in January — adding more than 10 million in the last year. This is up from the 37 million active accounts that Amazon shared in September.
Much of Roku’s user growth is coming from licensing the Roku platform to smart TV manufacturers. The company previously reported that nearly 1 in 3 smart TVs sold in the first half of 2019 use the Roku platform. The company continues to focus on growing their platform business as they also announced they hit $1.13 billion in revenue in 2019 in today’s report.
“While streaming became mainstream in the last decade, it is still a minority of TV viewing,” Wood and Louden stated. “We have now entered the streaming decade when we believe consumers around the world will choose streaming as their primary way of viewing TV.”
Earlier this week, The Roku Channel announced the addition of “Sesame Street” short videos to its Kids and Family section. The new offering will feature Elmo, Big Bird, Abby and the rest of the beloved characters free of charge. Users who are subscribed to HBO via Premium Subscriptions on The Roku Channel can also watch full episodes of the classic show.
In addition to adding “Sesame Street” videos, Roku also announced they created new content categories within the Kids and Family section. Users can now find content based on themes. Simply enter keywords, such as “cars,” “trains,” “jungle” or “challenges,” and a host of collections for that theme will come up.