Android phone users streamed almost 1 trillion hours in 2020

Streaming video consumption on mobile devices is rising annually, evidenced in part by a significant uptick on Android phones in 2020.

App Annie, a mobile app analytics company, said its State of Mobile 2021 report shows that in the fourth quarter of 2020, Android phone users were streaming around 240 billion hours, up nearly 65% from two years prior. For all of 2020, the total rose 40% to 935 billion hours.

Lexi Sydow, senior market insights manager at App Annie, said that globally, Netflix emerged as the top breakout app by time spent across markets in Asia, Latin America, North America and Europe, while YouTube remained the runaway leader for average monthly time spent per user — outpacing rivals by up to 6x.

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“TikTok’s user overlap with top streaming apps grew dramatically in 2020, more than doubling in the U.S., and Twitch remained a top 5 competitor among more ‘traditional’ streaming rivals,” she said in a statement. “TikTok and Twitch pose a dramatic shift in consumption towards user-generated and mobile-focused; a shift traditional players and marketers alike need to bake into their mobile strategies.”

For 2020, App Annie said that the Netflix app was the fastest-growing entertainment product (in terms of time spent) in the following markets: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, France, Germany, Turkey, and the UK. The company also said that Disney+ was the top 'breakout' entertainment app – referring to year over year growth in time spent streaming – in the U.S. for 2020, and the second in U.K., Germany and Australia.

However, it was YouTube that blew away all other apps in terms of average hours per month. In the U.S., YouTube averaged 23.1 hours per month, more than four times what App Annie measured for Netflix, which averaged 5.7 hours per month. Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Twitch rounded out the top five for average hours streamed per month in the U.S.