The big picture: Roku on Wednesday said it closed out 2020 with 51.2 million active user accounts, an increase of approximately 14 million accounts on the year. It's yet another sign of the times, where consumers are increasingly outing out of traditional pay TV services in favor of more flexible and affordable streaming options.
In the fourth quarter alone, Roku users streamed an estimated 17 billion hours of content, pushing the total number of hours streamed for the full year to 58.7 billion. That's an increase of 55 percent for the quarter and the full year, Roku said.
With the milestone, Roku is essentially neck and neck with Amazon. Back in late December, the e-commerce giant revealed that its Fire TV platform exceeded 50 million monthly active users in 2020.
In Roku's annual cord cutting study last year, the streaming media specialist found that 32 percent of US households didn't have a traditional pay TV subscription while another 25 percent had cut back on their pay TV service. Saving money was cited as the leading reason for cutting back or eliminating traditional pay TV subscriptions.
By the end of 2024, it is estimated that fewer than half of the households in the US will be doing business with a traditional cable or satellite provider.
Image credit rblfmr, J.J. Gouin