Google’s Chromecast may have been the most popular streaming device of its kind for some time, but that no longer seems to be the case. This shouldn’t be especially surprising given that there are a handful of other options out there now which take the form of an HDMI dongle that plugs directly into your TV, most notably Amazon’s Fire TV Stick, and ROKU’s 3500R streaming stick. That’s also in addition to other streaming devices like the Amazon Fire TV, ROKU’s other streaming media boxes and Apple’s Apple TV. According to a recent report from Parks Associates, the streaming media device brand which holds the top spot is actually ROKU , with Google trailing close behind in second and Amazon coming behind them both at number three.
All together the three devices reportedly make up a total of 86% of sales of the streaming device market, but separately ROKU’s devices hold about 34 percent while Google takes up 23 percent. Amazon’s percentage isn’t listed but the chart shows that they clearly come in ahead of Apple, and the four companies mentioned are the only four brands reported according to Parks Associates. It’s worth mentioning these are also recorded sales and shipment numbers from the year of 2014 so they could be plenty different based on this year’s number of sales for each brand.
Alongside showing which brands did the best, the report also states that out of the U.S. households who have broadband, about 20 percent of them own at least one streaming device. This percentage lowers a little bit for those households which own at least one streaming stick said to be at about 8 percent of U.S. broadband households, and about 2 percent are reported to own both types. As Google’s Chromecast along with other brand devices like those from ROKU and Amazon continue to expand into new markets, it’s estimated that at least 86 million streaming devices will be sold on a global scale by the year 2019. It’s somewhat surprising to see Google take the backseat to ROKU in this space especially with Chromecast’s low cost, but considering ROKU’s collection of offerings compared to Google’s one last year the Chromecast couldn’t have been expected to stay on top forever.