Vizio ended the first quarter of 2023 with 17.5 million active SmartCast accounts. While an increase on the previous quarter, it is only a very small increase. Year-over-year, however, the increase in the number of people actively using Vizio’s TV platform is much clearer to see.
SmartCast is the operating system and user experience that anyone using a Vizio smart TV will encounter. While some may opt to pair a Vizio TV with a standalone streaming player, SmartCast offers enough features and a wide enough level of app support that many may skip on using any other device.
It would seem the number of people opting for a Vizio smart TV, and actively using SmartCast is continually growing. According to the company’s latest quarter results, the SmartCast platform reached 17.5 million active accounts during the first quarter of the year.
Considering Vizio reported 17.4 million active SmartCast accounts at the end of Q4, and 2022 as a whole, the 17.5 million active accounts represents a minimum increase in the first three months.
When looking at the year-over-year results, it is easier to see how 2022 played out for Vizio. At the end of the first quarter of last year, Vizio reported 15.6 million active accounts, suggesting the number of active SmartCast users has grown almost 2 million over the past year, an increase of 12%.
In terms of the number of hours streamed, the pattern was very similar to the number of SmartCast active accounts. In the first quarter of this year, Vizio reported 4.9 billion streaming hours and this compares to 4.8 billion in Q4 2022 and 4.1 billion in Q1 2022. In other words, SmartCast users streamed almost one billion more hours in the first quarter of this year than they did in the first quarter of last year.
When it comes to average SmartCast hours per active account, this was also up 5% on last year, reaching 93 per month during Q1 2023.
