One in ten new smart TVs sold run on the Android TV platform.
The finding comes from a new report by Strategy Analytics on the state of the smart TV market in 2018.
The report found that 157 million smart TVs were sold during 2018 and with Google’s Android TV accounting for one in ten of those sales, the platform found itself in third place overall with a market share of 10-percent.
Edging out Android TV on 12-percent was LG with its WebOS solution. Although both seem fairly insignificant when you focus in on Samsung – the overall winner in this count.
Strategy Analytics found that Samsung and its Tizen operating system accounted for 21-percent of the smart TVs sold in 2018. In other words, more than one in five smart TVs sold during last year were running on Samsung’s TV OS solution.
Roku also proved to be a contender coming in fourth although significantly behind Android TV with Roku TVs accounting for 4-percent market share overall. Still, this is much better than the likes of Amazon and its Fire TV solution which barely made an impression on the market share numbers.
In spite of Samsung, LG and Android TV collectively accounting for over 40-percent of the market, there’s still plenty of room for any brand/platform to emerge as the true market leader. This is considering the ominous “Others” proved to be the leader with a straight 50-percent market share.
Having said that, these numbers do refer to the global market and it is understood the majority of the “Others” is made up of “customized versions of the Android OS” designed to satisfy the Chinese domestic market.
It would seem highly unlikely that will change anytime soon and if it does, the “Other” section is more likely to expand then shrink, resulting in a landscape where platforms like Tizen, WebOS and Android TV continue to remain in the minority.
If that is the case, Samsung is now starting to command a sizeable lead in what’s left of the market share.
Cementing a leading position in this market is of high importance to companies as the smart TV has evolved well beyond just a display in the living room.
Most smart TVs now offer multiple ways to connect to multiple other smart products in the home, and even more importantly in recent times is the services these companies can tie-in with their interface. This has proven to be a big investment point for many tech companies and this trend is likely to continue going forward.
Some of the added benefits of being the go-to operating system and service provider on TVs includes the ability to generate ad revenue and also collect user data. The latter of which has proven to be a way companies can increase revenue while opting to lower the cost of a TV to consumers in the first place. A win-win approach for both.
For example, it is now widely understood companies are happier to sell smart TVs at a lower price than they would offer the same TV without smart functionality for as it can recoup additional income after purchase.
Speaking of which, these so-called ‘dumb TVs’ continue to sell well in their own right as in spite of the rise of the smart TV, the report found smart TVs in 2018 only accounted for “67% of all TVs sold during the year.”