The battle of the week: Mixer vs Twitch
A few weeks ago, the famous American streamer under the pseudonym of Ninja announced that he left the streaming platform Twitch for its competitor: Mixer. In just a few days, the milestone of one million paid subscribers had been reached and the platform was the top spot for the most downloaded free apps in the United States. Today’s match is between these two competing applications: Mixer vs. Twitch.
In the left corner Mixer, (formerly Beam) the video game streaming service launched by Microsoft in January 2016.
In the right corner Twitch, leading platform for streaming video games (and other broadcasts) launched in June 2011. It has more than 35 million unique visitors per month.
The weighting
At weighing Mixer is the heavier application with a weight of 114 MB. Its opponent Twitch is lighter with a weight of 95 MB, or 16% less .
The fight
All the lights are now turned on the fighters and the match can finally begin.
In the first part of the battle to measure the impact of the launch phase of the application, Twitch assom Mixer in consumption more than 3x less energy. The difference in consumption is quite marked also on the streaming phase. Indeed, Twitch (11.6 mAh) dishes Mixer (15.4 mAh) K.O with a lower consumption of 24%. To end this confrontation, we have set up two decisive rounds of observation of the rest phases of each opponent. During the foreground phase, Twitch is still the master of the game, consuming 60% less. For the inactivity phase in the background it is a perfect draw!
The bell rings, end of the match!
The winner
Without any surprise, it’s a knockout victory for the Twitch app, declared victorious against its opponent Mixer on an overall score of 15.3 mAh at 23.9 mAh, either by consuming overall 56% less energy. Note that the Twitch power consumption is still very high. Twitch also dominates its competitor Mixer on memory consumption (-45%) and storage space. Mixer is doing well on data exchanged (-9%).
For those who like numbers
| Application | Version | Downloads | Playstore Grade | App weight (MB) | Exchanged data (KB) | Memory (MB) | Energy consumption (mAh) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mixer | 4.7.3 | 10 000 000+ | 4.1 | 114 | 44.5 | 427.9 | 23.9 |
| Twitch | 7.13.4 | 50 000 000+ | 4.6 | 95 | 49.1 | 231.3 | 15.3 |
On a 1 minute usage scenario, Twitch has a consumption equivalent to a browser app such as Google Chrome. (Source: Study Consumption of top 30 most popular mobile applications)
The measurements were carried out by our laboratory on the basis of a standardized protocol, respecting a specific user scenario (launch of the app, live streaming). The other scenarios are the launch of the application (20”), inactivity in the foreground (20”) and inactivity in the background (20”). This methodology makes it possible to estimate the embedded application complexity and its energy impact during the use phase.
Find the battle of last week : Kapten vs Uber
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Kimberley DERUDDER has been digital marketing manager at Greenspector for more than 5 years. Kimberley graduated with a master’s degree in Marketing – Communication and specialized in Inbound Marketing after her first two years at Greenspector. Today in charge of the animation of the marketing, social media and lead generation strategy, she also takes care of app comparisons and battles.