The smart TV landscape has quite a few players who have enjoyed success in different regions of the world, unlike say smartphones where you will typically find the most prominent players in Europe are also the biggest players in the USA and other regions of the world.
While Roku boxes and Fire TV sticks are all the rage in the USA, tripling their market share in OTT dongles (any device that can deliver video content across the web) over a six-year period between 2015 and the 1st quarter of 2021, Android TV (Including Google TV), LG’s WebOS and Samsung’s Tizen are the market leaders in Europe.
This market data was shared by FlatpanelsHD who were in attendance at the 2022 Philips TV event. Paul Gray, TV and video technology analyst at Omdia was quoted as the source.
According to Omdia, more than 90% of new TVs now come with some form of TV platform for apps and connected services built in, which is an increase of around 10% from the approximately 80% of TVs in 2019.
In the same time duration, Android TV has more than doubled its market share in Europe, growing from less than 10% to over 20% at the moment.
Omdia explains that this data does not include external players such as Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, Nvidia Shield, PlayStation, Roku, and Xbox. Furthermore, the data only covers new TV shipments and not TV platforms that are already in use.
Paul Gray attributes the growth of Android TV to its availability across TV ranges from entry-level to the high end, as well as network effects for both developers and consumers, as key reasons. He contrasts Android TV to LG’s WebOS and Samsung’s Tizen saying they do not enjoy a strong position in mobile or other relevant segments.
Paul Gray goes further and says that the “third streaming wave” has begun, and it will not be long before cloud gaming dwarfs consoles, which is a huge opportunity for TV makers to take advantage of.
He points to Amazon Luna, Google Stadia, GeForce Now and Xbox as examples of game streaming services that are currently available, noting that they have already started to appear in Smart TVs as apps.
Paul Gray sees the World Cup in Qatar as a catalyst for TV sales in the second half of 2022. However, he thinks the beginning of 2023 will be a rough time for the Smart TV market before it steadily recovers between 2024 and 2026.
