Live streaming service Twitch posts 22m global installs in Q1, up 62%

Live streaming service Twitch hit 22 million installs globally in Q1 2021, up 62% year-on-year (YoY).

The latest figures marked a 62% growth from Q1 2020 when it had 13.6 million installs, according to a new report by Sensor Tower.

The new figures continued strong growth in post-pandemic 2020 when it ended the year with 80.6 million installs, up 134% from 34.5 million for the 2019 calendar year.

Twitch users put in 17 billion live-streamed hours, up 83% on 2019’s nine billion, according to StreamElements and Arsenal.gg.

In March 2021, Twitch’s monthly active users grew 69% from the same period a year before.

The US remains Twitch’s largest market, wjere installs there grew 91% YoY in 2020 to 17.6 million.

It saw continued growth on US app stores in Q 1 2021 when it hit five million downloads, up 61% from just over three million in Q1 2020.

Twitch’s five biggest markets in 2020 were the US (17.6 million), Brazil (9.3 million), Mexico (4.5 million), Argentina (3.3 million) and the UK (3.1 million).

The biggest growth was in India where it jumped 588% YoY to 2.2 million from 320,000 in 2019.

Australia’s figures are not known. But last year its first senior vice president for the Asia-Pacific region, former Spotify executive Sunita Kaur, announced that the company was actively pushing into the Australian market – away from gaming to music, sport and comedy.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported in September 2020 that the number of Australian streamers making money from Twitch has increased by 350% in the past two years.

The platform’s power was shown locally when Melbourne-based ex-army rifleman turned professional Twitch streamer Paul ‘Pestily’ Licari, who has 600,000 followers, raised $1.1 million for the Starlight Children’s Foundation between January and July 2020.