Android TV

Android TV makes up 1 of every 10 Smart TVs globally, trails behind Samsung and Roku

Ben Schoon | Mar 29 2019 - 6:42 am PT

At this point, it’s hard to find a TV in the store or out in the wild that isn’t running on some smart TV platform. As Google’s Android TV picks up steam thanks to operators, the platform is now making up 1 in 10 smart TVs globally.

A report this week from Strategy Analytics reveals a few interesting numbers relating to TV market share globally, with Smart TVs making up about 67% of sales during 2018. According to the report, Google’s Android TV is now running on roughly 1 in 10 Smart TVs around the world. Of course, Google sits behind the market leaders Samsung and Roku.

Over 1 in 5 Smart TVs now run on Samsung’s Tizen OS and continues to be the global market leader. In the United States, however, Roku continues to dominate with its platform powering 1 in 4 Smart TVs in the country despite having just 4% of global market share. Set-top boxes and operators using customized builds of Android also make up a significant portion of this number.

The latest research found that more than one than one in five Smart TVs sold today run on the Samsung developed Tizen platform while one in ten run on the Google managed Android TV system… Control over the Smart TV operating system is therefore of critical importance as it is through this software layer that companies can extract the valuable user data that drives targeted ad revenues. It is for this reason that Google, Roku, and Amazon are battling to persuade TV makers to build their TV software platforms into their sets rather than go through the expensive and time-consuming process of building and maintaining their own operating systems.

Just this week, Google further presented numbers on Android TV’s growth at CTVS in London, revealing continued growth in activations and 140 partners in the operator space. It’s these partnerships that David Mercer, a Principal Analyst at Strategy Analytics attributes Google’s growth to. He further mentions, though, that Samsung’s partnership with Apple looks to give them a further advantage in the space that “these other fast-growing platforms cannot match.”