Netflix leads on downloads, but YouTube Kids grabs more hours

[April 03, 2020]    By Ayanti Bera

(Reuters) - Netflix Inc led rivals YouTube, Amazon Prime and Disney+ with over 59 million installs in the first quarter of 2020, but more time was spent on YouTube's Kids service as usage boomed following the shutdown of thousands of schools in March.

YouTube, owned by Alphabet Inc's Google, collected $110 million in in-app spending during the same time period, the highest among major streaming apps globally, according to a report by analytics firms Apptopia and Braze.

The report did not give actual hours of usage, but ranked YouTube Kids first, followed by Netflix. YouTube itself was in third place.

The report also showed that Amazon.com Inc's game streaming platform Twitch was also among the most downloaded mobile apps globally, gathering nearly $20 million in user spending in the same period.

Riot Games' online battle title "League of Legends" is currently the most watched game on the platform, according to TwitchMetrics, which tracks the popularity of games on the platform.

The coronavirus pandemic, and the resulting move across the world towards working from home, has driven a boom in usage of online gaming, streaming and communications, putting pressure on streaming companies' infrastructure and speed.

Zoom Video Communications Inc said late on Wednesday that its daily users had ballooned to more than 200 million in March from a maximum last year of 10 million.

Video streaming sessions just on mobile devices surged 31% in March, Apptopia and Braze said.

(Reporting by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

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