# "All ads" free TV: LiveBox TV hits 200k installs in a week-plus, and it's not the product

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/apps/play_com.kaki.livebox.livetv.watchmovies.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
> Stringers answers one question every day: what small product can one or two people build in a few months and actually make money from. Numbers come from 15 databases we collect daily, each with source and date.
> For agents: these verdicts and the underlying databases (verified revenue, App Store / Google Play charts, ad libraries, GitHub, Product Hunt…) are queryable live over MCP — tools today / hot / products / directions / direction / data. Setup: https://github.com/komako-workshop/stringers (the user logs in at stringers.io → "配置 agent" to get a personal URL). Site index: https://stringers.io/llms.txt

> South Asia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia have lots of people who want to watch live streams for free. It buys ads in batches in these low-ARPU markets (inferred), pays back through high-frequency ads, and uses in-app pop-ups to keep its rating above 4.2.

[Mobile App](https://stringers.io/en/apps/index.md) · Android · written 11-6

LiveBox TV: Movies & TV Shows · Kaki techs

# "All ads" free TV: LiveBox TV hits 200k installs in a week-plus, and it's not the product

**What it is** A free live-TV app listed as a "play your own playlist" player; users watch live channels, cricket, and movies for free, and it makes money from ads.

**Why it took off** There's large demand for free live TV in South Asia, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. It appears to buy installs in these low-CPM markets in batches (inferred), recoups with high-frequency ads, and pushes ratings above 4.2 with in-app rating prompts.

**C** **How you could follow** Don't build the 30th gray-area wrapper. If you want this demand, build a version that aggregates only legal free live sources plus cricket schedules and scores, or a real player for paying IPTV users; acquisition can use Google App Ads targeting India and the Gulf.

Grade C: the playbook is learnable (low-price-market installs + ad monetization + rating prompts), and it has nothing followers can't get, but the shelf is packed with dozens of clones, the leader has over ten times its volume, and it sits on copyright and Play delisting risk, so copying it isn't worth it. Few people know about it yet

Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-07-27 · 11-07 installs 275,555

Android · Total installs worldwide

Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.

Android · Ratings count (cumulative)

Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-07 (10 days, 10 observations)

A Pakistani solo developer's "live TV player": it died for 6 weeks after launching in August, restarted in October, and hit 200k installs in just over a week in early November, climbing to #14 on India's Entertainment Free chart. Dozens of identical clones exist, and users' reviews are almost all complaining about ads. This piece explains how it rose, where the money comes from, why we don't recommend copying it, and which move here is worth learning.

### A review 28 people marked helpful

The Google Play store page for LiveBox TV: the top review reads "I should have given 5 ⭐ but your ads are too much"; 28 people found it helpful. Below it: "100 ads bad tv no english Chinese app," 21 found it helpful. Then: "dosnt work just ads."

Yet the same page shows a 4.3-star rating. 11-06 We see 2,659 ratings, and only 9 have written text; 2 stars is 0 ratings (Google Play, 11-06). An app where users write only complaints but the star rating looks great: that's what this business looks like.

On Nov 3, a small Indian channel called TheTECMaster posted a Hindi video "LiveBox TV App Kaise Use Kare" (how to use LiveBox TV); two days later it had 119 views. This is all the discussion we could find online: no media coverage, and no mention on X in 30 days.

### What it is

Named "LiveBox TV: Movies & TV Shows," the store copy says it's a video player for live TV, movies, news, and sports from "your own playlist." That line is written for the reviewers. Users come for the name and screenshots, wanting free live channels, cricket, and movies; the "no english Chinese app" review hints that ready-made content is inside after install (inferred, unverified).

Labeled "contains ads," no in-app purchases. The money is all from ads.

### Who made it

The developer account is named Kaki techs, with a Gmail contact and an Indonesian phone number. The legal entity on the store page is a UK company, HEFRO SPORTS LTD: registered 2026 February in a shared office in London, with a sole director, a Pakistani national born in 1999 and living in Pakistan (UK Companies House). Using a UK shell company for a Play developer account is common among South Asian developers.

The same account also has screen-casting, blood-pressure monitoring, short dramas, and several small utilities: a typical wrapper portfolio. A third-party estimate puts the account's October total downloads at 87k to 430k, with in-app purchase revenue under $5 thousand (AppGazers).

### Curve: dead for 6 weeks, then revived

| Timeline | Total installs | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 08-11 → 08-23 | 4,464 → 15,583 | First wave after launch |
| 08-24 → 10-05 | Plateaued around 16k | Single digits per day, essentially stopped |
| 10-06 → 10-27 | → 74k | Traffic picked back up |
| 10-31 → 11-06 | 95k → 276k | +200k in one week |

The first three rows are AppstoreSpy estimates; the last row is Google Play installs (11-06). Play install counts don't refresh daily; on 11-02 it jumped by 137k in one step, and similar apps TVStream, VizoTV, and TVLive also jumped by hundreds of thousands over the same two or three days, so don't treat one day as a real spike; look at the weekly total.

The charts also rise and fall: India Entertainment Free went from #10-29 to #142,10-31, then #30,11-04 to #85,11-06, back to #14; the UAE Entertainment chart went from #125 to #21 in two days. It now appears on the Entertainment charts of 17 countries and regions, including Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia (Google Play charts, 11-06).

### Where the users come from: almost certainly bought

We didn't directly see its ads in the ad libraries, so the following is inference, but the evidence is substantial:

- Push a launch, pause for 6 weeks, restart, which looks like turning ad budget on and off;

- rankings in several countries swing up and down within days, and it's rolled out across 17 stores at once, which organic traffic rarely looks like;

- the top apps in the same category ramp at the same pace in the same window;

- The only monetization is ads. As long as the cost to acquire a user is below the ad revenue that user brings in, it can keep compounding. Google App ads (UAC) are cheap in India, Southeast Asia and Africa, which suits this kind of algorithm.

What's left is store search (the name and description are stuffed with Live TV, Movies, TV Shows, live sports, and these terms likely peak during India's cricket matches, though that's inferred) and in-app prompts for ratings. Ratings grow hundreds of times faster than written reviews, and good star scores keep the store page converting.

### Who it's competing with: a whole shelf of copies

This isn't a new category, it's a shelf that's already packed. 11-06 ranked by installs added over 7 days (Google Play):

| Product | Launched | Total installs | 7-day gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| TVStream: Watch Movies & TV (Vietnamese developer) | 2026-07 | 3.6M | +1.09M |
| Live TV: Live Sports Streaming | 2026-03 | 15.4M | +890k |
| VizoTV: Live TV & Channels | 2026-07 | 1.08M | +510k |
| TVora: Live TV & Movies (Vietnamese developer) | 2026-07 | 630k | +320k |
| TVLive: Watch Live TV & Movies | 2026-01 | 5.21M | +310k |
| **LiveBox TV** | 2026-07 | 276k | +200k |
| IPTV Video Player: Live TV | 2026-09 | 210k | +150k |

There are dozens more "Live Cricket TV HD"-style apps, and new ones kept launching through late September. They're nearly identical: names like "XX TV: Movies & TV Shows", descriptions claiming they play "from your own playlists", and reviews complaining about ads. LiveBox sits mid-to-low in this group and came three weeks after TVStream, so it's a follower, not a pioneer. On the official side are JioTV, ZEE5 and FanCode, which serve people willing to pay or who want licensed content; these copies serve people who don't want to pay and just want free live TV.

### Why it took off

1. **The demand is real, and it's grey** . Many people in South Asia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia want free live channels and cricket, and official versions require a subscription. Calling it a "player" is what lets it get listed.

2. **Category tailwind.** 2026 saw a fresh wave of reskinned apps (mostly from Vietnamese and South Asian teams) buying paid installs in the same markets, which kept acquisition cheap. LiveBox rode that wave and picked up its share of installs.

3. **Squeezing ads** . "100 ads" isn't an exaggeration. Users don't pay, so each user's value depends entirely on ad frequency.

4. **Stars holding up the page** . The prompt asks only for stars, not text, and ratings above 4.2 keep the store page converting.

On its own it has no visible differentiation: playlists, favorites, search and orientation all work exactly like the rest.

### If it were you

**Bottom line** : you can learn a playbook from it, but I wouldn't copy it. The shelf is already full, and how long these apps last depends on when Google Play decides to clean them out.

**Who it's for** : teams already running UAC, holding AdMob accounts and several developer accounts, used to "when one package gets pulled, switch to the next." For them this is one more category to spread across, not a new opportunity.

**Who it's not for** : indie devs who want a long-term product, people who've never run paid ads, and anyone unwilling to go near copyright grey areas. These apps often draw copyright complaints and get removed by Play policy, reviews are all complaints, retention is likely poor, and the account-level risk lands on you.

**If you still want to build** : don't make the 30th "free live TV" shell. Build the half they're doing badly: legal content. For example, aggregate only free, openly licensed live sources by country (FAST channels, official YouTube livestreams, public broadcasters), and add cricket scores, schedules and reminders. Or build a real player for people who already pay for IPTV (the TiviMate and XCIPTV path), earning from subscriptions instead of ads. You can still acquire users with UAC in India, the Gulf and Southeast Asia, and still bid on Live TV / live cricket keywords. The difference is that you can last.

**When is "before"** : cricket season and the weeks around big matches are when these searches peak, and India's match calendar sets the window. But the copy-app wave runs on a timescale of weeks, and as more clones appear, ad costs only go up.

**What would mean we got it wrong** : if over the next month or two the leaders like TVStream and VizoTV don't get pulled and installs keep growing by hundreds of thousands a week, Play tolerates this kind of app more than we assumed, and the window for copying is bigger than we think. Conversely, if LiveBox drops out of the top hundred and installs stop growing a week from now, it was just a paid push that stops when the spend stops.

[Android store page ↗](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaki.livebox.livetv.watchmovies)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TVStream: Watch Movies & TV | Android | 2026-07-04 | 3.6M installs, +1.09M in 7 days | Same copy, launched earlier, with more than ten times the volume. LiveBox is a reprint of it. |
| Live TV: Live Sports Streaming(TRIPATHI) | Android | 2026-03-03 | 15.4M installs, +890k in 7 days | Focused on live sports, much larger scale, ranks higher on the India chart |
| VizoTV: Live TV & Channels | Android | 2026-07-30 | 1.08M installs, +510k in 7 days | A same-category app launched nearly the same day, with 4 times LiveBox's volume |
| TVora: Live TV & Movies | Android | 2026-07-30 | 630k installs, 7 days +320k | A Vietnamese team's version, focused on India |
| IPTV Player - Smart Live TV(Metaverse Labs) | Android | 2023-12 | 41.4M installs | An old IPTV player with grossing revenue (subscriptions), positioned more like a legitimate tool |
| JioTV / ZEE5 / FanCode | Android | 2012–2018 | Tens of millions to 500M installs | An official platform with licensed content. LiveBox serves people who don't want to pay and want free live TV. |
| TiviMate / XCIPTV | Android | Around 2018 | XCIPTV 25.3M installs | A real player for paying IPTV subscribers, not built on the "free" hook |

Where users come from

- Inferred **Google App ads / paid acquisition** : the install curve comes in waves (a launch push, a 6-week pause, a volume ramp after an October restart). Rank in India and the UAE swings from 125→21 and 85→14 within days, it's rolled out across 17 stores at once, and monetization is ads only. Meta and Google ad libraries show no tracking for it.

- Inferred **Store search ASO** : the name and description are packed with high-volume terms like Live TV / Movies / TV Shows / live sports, and related searches spike during India's cricket matches.

- **Verified** **YouTube creator tutorials** : TheTECMaster's "LiveBox TV App Kaise Use Kare" has 2026-11-03,116 views. The category also has Indian creator promotion (competitor reviews complain about influencers).

- Inferred **In-app rating prompt** : 2,659 ratings but only 9 written reviews, and the 2-star count has stayed at 0.

## Why LiveBox TV: Movies & TV Shows (com.kaki.livebox.livetv.watchmovies) could get traction

**One-line verdict** : it didn't get traction on product merit. It's another "live TV / IPTV player" copy in a Google Play category that's already packed. The store copy says it only "plays your own playlists," but users come for "free live TV, cricket, movies." The developer is an individual or small studio in Pakistan (Kaki techs). The install curve comes in bursts (a spike after launch, then 6 weeks of stall, an October restart, and volume ramping in early November). That looks like Google App ads (UAC) in India, the Gulf and Southeast Asia, with AdMob ads paying it back. The main evidence is comments like "100 ads" and "just ads," plus 2,659 ratings with only 9 written reviews. The ad buying itself wasn't directly verified. It shows no visible differentiation from its peers.

### 1. Basic data

- Developer Kaki techs. The listing's release date is 2026-07-27, current version 1.0.2 (updated 2026-10-16). Marked "contains ads" with no in-app purchases (googleplay library app_snap, 2026-11-06).

- Cumulative global installs up 201,476 over 275,555,7 days. Rating 2,659 (10-29 is 717). Rating 4.25, trending downward (10-29 is 4.52) (googleplay library app_day / app_snap).

- Charts (googleplay library chart_rank, 2026-11-06): #14 in India's Entertainment free chart and #118 in India's overall app chart; #21 in the UAE Entertainment chart (11-04 or 125). It also charts in Entertainment on 17 other stores including Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, ranking between #72 and #177. India's Entertainment rank went 10-29: 142,10-31 climbed to 30,11-04, fell back to 85,11-06, then returned to 14. The rise and fall suggests batched spending.

- **Install curve since launch** (googleplay library app_day_ext, AppstoreSpy estimates):
    - 08-11 to 08-23: rose from 4,464 to 15,583, the first wave after launch;
    - 08-24 to 10-05: daily gains in single digits, cumulative stuck at 15.6k–16k, essentially dead for 6 weeks;
    - Restart from 10-06: 10-16 to 32k, 10-21 to 50k, 10-27 to 74k;
    - 10-31 to 95k, 11-02 to 232k (+137k in two days), 11-06 to 276k.
    - Note: Play's cumulative install counts don't refresh daily. TVStream, VizoTV, TVora, TVLive and Live TV (TRIPATHI) in the same category also jump by hundreds of thousands in one shot between 10-31 and 11-03, so single-day numbers only give a rough picture and shouldn't be read as a specific day of surge.

- **The rating structure is suspicious** : only 9 of the 2,659 ratings have written text (written_reviews). In the histogram the 2-star count has stayed at 0 (11-06: [351, 0, 150, 301, 1856]). This looks like an in-app prompt that asks only for stars and doesn't invite written reviews, and possibly a filtered nudge toward positive ratings (unverified).

- The few written reviews visible on the store page all complain about ads: "I should have given 5 ⭐ but your ads are too much" (28 people found it helpful), "100 ads bad tv no english Chinese app", "dosnt work just ads" (Google Play store page, 2026-08 to October).

### 2. Who's behind it and how big they are

- Developer: Kaki techs. No physical presence turns up for the website kakitech.ltd. The contact email is Gmail (afaqkaki555@gmail.com), and the phone number is Indonesian (+62). The legal entity on the store is **HEFRO SPORTS LTD** : registered with UK Companies House 17039651,2026-02-18, with a shared-office address on Great Portland Street in London, business activity listed as "online retail," sole director Sayyed Saim Hissan, Pakistani national, born 1999, living in Pakistan. A same-named hefrosports.com is a jersey brand. So a UK shell company is being used to open the Play developer account, a common practice among South Asian developers.

- The same account has 5 other apps (per the Google Play developer page / AppGazers): screen casting, blood pressure monitoring, the HotSeries short drama app, and three small tools with package names starting com.ameighteen.*. It's a typical matrix of utility and entertainment copies. AppGazers estimates the account's combined October downloads at 87k–430k, with in-app purchase revenue under $5 thousand. Monetization is through ads, not in-app purchases.

### 3. Competitors: a packed category

Searching the googleplay library for iptv / live tv / m3u / playlist / live cricket and similar terms, sorted by installs added over 7 days (2026-11-06):

| Product | Developer | Launched | Total installs | 7-day gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TVStream: Watch Movies & TV | AN BINH (Vietnam) | 2026-07-04 | 3.6M | +1.09M |
| Live TV: Live Sports Streaming | TRIPATHI | 2026-03-03 | 15.4M | +890k |
| VizoTV: Live TV & Channels | Nonari Tec | 2026-07-30 | 1.08M | +510k |
| IPTV Smart Player - Online TV | LDream | 2025-08 | 14.2M | +390k |
| TVora: Live TV & Movies | GOMEC VIET NAM | 2026-07-30 | 630k | +320k |
| TVLive: Watch Live TV & Movies | Trinity Technologies | 2026-01 | 5.21M | +310k |
| IPTV Player - Smart Live TV | Metaverse Labs | 2023-12 | 41.4M | +310k |
| IPTV Player - Smart Online TV | MomenHaz998 | 2026-07-15 | 2M | +210k |
| **LiveBox TV** | Kaki techs | 2026-07-27 | 276k | +200k |
| IPTV Video Player: Live TV | Mee Game | 2026-09-17 | 210k | +150k |
| Live IPTV: Online & Pro Player | GEBILAL | 2026-09-15 | 340k | +150k |

There are dozens more "Live Cricket TV HD"-style apps. The established players include JioTV (520M), ZEE5, Tubi, Plex, FanCode and YouTube TV. Legacy players include XCIPTV and TiviMate. LiveBox sits mid-to-low in this category and launched after TVStream, so it's a follower, not a pioneer. These apps are almost identical: names like "XX TV: Movies & TV Shows / Live TV," descriptions claiming "from your own playlists" to get through review, and reviews that likewise say "all ads."

### 4. Where users come from

- **Paid acquisition (inferred, strong but no direct ad seen)** : (1) the curve comes in waves, a launch spike, a 6-week pause, then a restart, which matches budgets being switched on and off; (2) rank in India, the UAE and Indonesia swings sharply within days while it's rolled out across 17 stores at once; (3) the top apps in the category (TVStream, VizoTV, TVLive) ramp at the same pace; (4) the only monetization is ads, so as long as cost per install is below ad revenue per user, it compounds. Our Meta and Google ad libraries show no tracking for it (not being on the list doesn't mean it didn't spend), and TikTok turned up no ads or creator videos for it.

- **Store search** : the name and description are stuffed with high-volume terms like "Live TV, Movies, TV Shows, live sports, news" (ASO). During cricket series like India vs Pakistan or India vs the West Indies, searches for "free live TV / live cricket app" in India are high. This is an inference.

- **YouTube micro-creators** : Only one Hindi tutorial turned up, "LiveBox TV App Kaise Use Kare" (TheTECMaster, 2026-11-03,116 views). Very small. Similar apps in India have lots of "Free Live TV Channels App" Shorts (e.g. StreamNexa's Shorts at 50k views, riding #INDvsWI). A rival, TVStream, has Indian reviews complaining "The Influencers who are promoting this app," which shows this category does use paid influencers, but none turned up for LiveBox itself.

- **Ratings from in-app prompts** : Ratings grow hundreds of times faster than written reviews. The prompt pushes star counts up (4.2–4.5), and the good-looking star rating then helps store conversion.

### 5. Why it took off

1. Demand is a must-have with a gray edge: users in South Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa want to watch live channels, cricket and movies for free, while the legit versions require a subscription. Calling it an "IPTV player" lets it get listed on Play, and users expect the channels to already be inside.

2. The category is being pushed by a wave of 2026-year-old clones (mostly from Vietnamese and South Asian teams) buying installs and climbing charts together. UAC is cheap for this audience, and LiveBox rode that wave to get its volume.

3. Ad monetization, no payment from users needed. "100 ads" suggests it squeezes each user's value with ad frequency.

4. The rating prompt keeps the star rating at 4.2 or above, so store conversion holds.

### 6. Differentiation

Store pages, reviews and screenshots show no real difference: features (playlists, favorites, search, lock screen, landscape/portrait) match its competitors. The only thing to note is that it spreads across 17 storefronts, more than most rivals that target one or two. Differentiation isn't why it took off. Paid acquisition plus category tailwinds are.

### 7. Visibility and copycats

- Visibility: nobody knows about it. No press coverage, no discussion on X (x-radar: 30 days, 0 posts), no one has publicly shared revenue, and there's just one YouTube tutorial with 116 views.

- Copycats: it is itself a copycat. Similar apps still launching after it include IPTV Video Player (2026-09-17), Live IPTV Pro Player (2026-09-15) and IPTV Stream & Live Channels (2026-09-30).

### 8. What to borrow

- The playbook itself: find a "must-have + expensive legit version" category, list under a compliant shell (a player), stack the name and description with high-search-volume terms, push volume with UAC in low-ARPU regions, monetize with AdMob at high frequency, and use in-app prompts to lift ratings. Run several clones under one account to spread the risk.

- The risks are just as clear: this kind of app often draws copyright complaints and Play policy removals, its reviews are full of complaints about ads, and retention is very likely poor.

### 9. Still unclear

- Whether it runs ads, where (Meta and Google ad libraries show no tracking for it), and how much it spends.

- Whether the app preloads channels or pulls playlists remotely (the review "no english Chinese app" hints at ready-made content), and how big the compliance risk is.

- Retention and ad revenue; whether the 2-star histogram of 0 reflects prompted good reviews.

- Why it went quiet from 08-24 to 10-05 and restarted in October (paused spending? store policy? new creatives?).

### Sources

- Google Play store page [play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaki.livebox.livet…](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kaki.livebox.livetv.watchmovies) (2026-11-06 crawl)

- googleplay library: app_profile / app_snap / app_day / app_day_ext (AppstoreSpy estimates) / chart_rank, 2026-10-29 to 11-06

- Companies House HEFRO SPORTS LTD [find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/1…](https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/17039651), director page /officers

- AppGazers developer report [appgazers.com/reports/developers/android-Kaki+techs](https://appgazers.com/reports/developers/android-Kaki+techs)

- YouTube: lqizL0p__4U (TheTECMaster), 2ikzgpWj7aA (StreamNexa); x-radar search "LiveBox TV", 30 days, 0 posts; metaads / googleads libraries have no matching advertiser

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.