Americans who "can't find the TV remote" are propping up a niche vertical market that generates monthly revenues of tens of millions.

钱塘出海2025-07-29 14:26
A "boring but profitable" tool category

A "boring but profitable" tool category.

Produced by | The Editorial Department of Baijing App出海

Author | Li Shuang

Data from market research firm Nielsen shows that as of 2022, the average American household has 2.3 TVs, and the average adult spends 32 hours a week watching TV. The extremely high density of TV devices and high - frequency usage habits have given rise to a very niche but incredibly profitable tool category in recent years - TV remote control apps.

TV remote control apps can be a real necessity in some situations. For example, you suddenly can't find the original remote or the remote's battery runs out and you don't have a spare. For overseas families with multiple TVs, such minor annoyances may occur more frequently. As a result, in May this year alone, TV remote control apps received over 20 million downloads, and the revenue situation is equally astonishing. Users spent as much as $11 million on this category that month. The United States has always been the most important revenue market.

The seemingly "boring" TV remote control apps have attracted many developers. A positive sign is that this is not a winner - takes - all category. Users usually randomly choose products at the top of the search results and have almost no brand loyalty, which brings opportunities to more developers.

According to Appfigures' statistics, in the past 12 months, there were more than 21 TV remote control apps with cumulative in - app purchase revenues exceeding $1 million. If we extend the time frame to 17 months, the highest - earning product's total revenue in just 17 months can reach up to $16 million, with an average monthly revenue of nearly $1 million.

The revenue situation of the top TV remote control apps as counted by Appfigures. The total revenue of the highest - earning product in just 17 months can reach up to $16 million, with an average monthly revenue of nearly $1 million

01 No brand, strong tactics. Is the secret to getting rich "users forgetting to cancel subscriptions"?

Appfigures counted all apps with "TV" and "remote" in their names and found 1705 related apps. Most of them are available on Google Play, and the number of products on the App Store is less than 500. Contrary to the quantity distribution, the in - app purchase revenue on iOS is significantly higher. Among the 21 TV remote control apps with annual revenues exceeding $1 million in the above statistics, 19 of them get their subscription revenues from the App Store.

Since iPhones do not have an infrared emission function, the applicable scope of iOS remote control apps is basically limited to smart TVs that can be connected to the Internet. The rapid popularization of smart TVs is the key background for the rise of this category.

In the past five years, the household penetration rate of smart TVs in the United States has increased from about 61% to over 70%, providing a solid user base for remote control apps. This is also the reason why almost all the top - earning TV remote control apps were released in the past five years - they happened to seize the dividend period brought about by the popularization of smart TVs and the dominance of streaming media (users need to browse and search among multiple streaming platforms, making remote control operations more complex). In addition, they have the following commonalities:

First, there is severe homogenization in naming and icons. The names of TV remote control apps are almost all permutations and combinations of the keywords "TV", "Remote", "Universal", "Control", and symbols like "-" and "·" are used to avoid direct duplication. The icons are all the same - looking remote controls, which directly convey the function but lack any brand recognition. This is closely related to users' lack of brand loyalty in this category. Users mostly download the apps ranked at the top casually.

An overview of TV remote control apps

Second, the function promotion generally emphasizes support for multiple - brand TVs. It covers Roku TV, TCL, Sony, etc. There are also remotes for specific brands, especially Roku TV, mainly because its user base is large enough. Roku not only makes its own TVs, but its Roku OS is also the most popular TV operating system in the United States, pre - installed on TVs of dozens of brands such as TCL and Hisense, covering an estimated 90 million American households. This also leads some products to use the same purple color as the Roku brand in their icons to enhance the association. However, the top 5 revenue - earning products are all for general smart TVs, reflecting a higher market coverage.

At the functional level, the top products are also constantly enriching the remote control experience. In addition to simulating the button operations of physical remote controls, they also provide functions such as voice input, keyboard input, and simulated touchpad operations to improve the user input experience and efficiency. In the United States, streaming media services (Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Max, etc.) have become the most important sources of TV content. So, a separate tab to help users quickly switch apps is also a standard feature. In addition, screen mirroring is the most important additional function. Some apps have also added functions such as support for watch operations, widget entrances, and personalized remote control appearances to show differentiation.

In terms of revenue sources, the United States is the most important revenue - generating country for this type of tool. Among the top 5 revenue - earning apps, the revenue contribution from American users ranges from 70% to 90%.

In terms of business models, these products generally use a mixed monetization model of IAA (advertising) and IAP (in - app purchase), and almost all require a subscription to be used normally. TV remote control apps usually offer a 3 - day free trial. If users do not manually cancel after the trial period expires, the subscription will be automatically renewed.

Interestingly, there is a high consistency between the automatically renewed items pushed by each product and its main revenue source. For example, "TV Remote - Universal Control" sets the annual subscription at $39.99 as the default automatic renewal item, and this item is the largest source of its in - app purchase revenue, greatly boosting the product's ARPU. However, this actually does not conform to users' rational consumption choices, because users can actually choose to buy it outright at the same price. In contrast, more products set the weekly subscription as the automatic payment item, which is also consistent with the data that they mainly profit from the weekly subscription items, indicating that a core profit point in this category may be "users forgetting to cancel subscriptions".

The design of setting the annual subscription package as an automatically renewed item has also led to a relatively low rating for "TV Remote - Universal Control" in the app store to some extent

02 How to grow? Being found is more important than "being useful"

The growth logic of TV remote control apps can almost be summarized as "whoever is found by users first can make money". Since users have almost no brand loyalty, most people just download the apps at the top of the search results. Search exposure is almost equivalent to the ability to acquire customers. The growth path of these products rarely relies on the link of "seeing an ad - being stimulated with a need - then downloading", but is completely centered around the scenario of users' active searches.

In this case, the mainstream growth methods in this category include two aspects:

App Store Optimization (ASO):

The top TV remote control apps usually optimize their names and keyword fields, making extensive use of permutations and combinations of high - frequency words such as "TV", "Remote", "Universal", "Control" to form a rich coverage of long - tail keywords. According to the data crawled by Diandian Data, the natural search coverage of these apps can reach thousands or even nearly ten thousand different keywords, greatly increasing the probability of being searched by users.

Apple Search Ads advertising:

ASA is another key growth path. Appfigures data shows that among the TV remote control apps with annual revenues exceeding $1 million, the vast majority are actively running ASA campaigns. On average, each app covers more than 6000 keywords in its advertising, aiming to precisely capture users' search needs and firmly occupy the entrance of search ads.

03 In conclusion

Although TV remote control apps may seem like just "boring tools", against the background of multiple TV devices, high usage frequency, users' essential needs, and extremely low brand loyalty, they have become a replicable "invisible business" template. With the popularization of smart TVs and the dominance of streaming media, remote control apps are already partially better than traditional remotes in terms of input experience and cross - brand adaptation, and have the potential to become long - term tools for users.

However, judging from the current performance, the main revenue source of these apps does not entirely depend on users' long - term and high - frequency usage, but is more driven by "users forgetting to cancel subscriptions". This case also shows that the success of some products depends more on growth strategies and charging designs, rather than the real and continuous usage value for users.

The data comes from third - party platforms such as SimilarWeb, Diandian Data, Semrush, and Guangdada, and there may be some errors compared with the real data, which is for reference only.

Long - press to scan the QR code, note "Baijing" to apply to join the Baijing community and get more information, events, and resources

This article is from the WeChat official account "Baijing App出海". Author: Baijing Editor. It is published with authorization.