What They Say
Strategy Analytics put out a press release (Strategy Analytics: Samsung’s Tizen Smart TV Streaming Platform Scaled New Heights in 2020) with details of the global installed base of TV streaming platforms. It ranked Samsung as having the largest installed base with 12.7% on a total global connected device market of 1.28 billion.
Google’s Android TV (+42%), Roku TV OS (+40%) and Amazon’s Fire OS (+35%), while Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox and Google Cast each saw declines. (We recently reported that Sony will stop selling VOD on the PlayStation, although support of other apps is a different question. Sony PlayStation moves further away from video)
The report predicts that the number of Tizen devices in use will increase to 184 million by the end of this year, while Google, LG, Roku and Amazon will continue to battle for the other leading positions.
Roku is the leading platform in the US, where it controls nearly 20% of connected TV devices in use. However Tizen is the leader in 22 of the 25 countries surveyed in the report and WebOS ranks second in 13 markets.
What We Think
Although 12.7% of the market doesn’t sound like the kind of dominance that we’re used to seeing from Samsung, by my calculation that is 162 million devices worldwide, which is a big installed base to have access to and to potentially exploit. It made me wonder why Samsung hadn’t tried to extend its base by bringing out a dongle. That could easily add another 5% or so, although I guess the firm might worry that it might cannibalise some set sales, although it could always offer something slightly less than the latest version of Tizen. However, it would also give a way to update older sets.
The second surprise to me was the percentage of ‘Others’ and I guess that this is the huge number of STBs that are out in the market that have some streaming capability as well as small brand and low cost sets that perhaps just support HbbTV or other hybrid platforms. (BR)
