Samsung’s Tizen operating system has retained the largest individual share of the global connected TV market, which reached 1.28 billion devices in 2020.
According to new research released by Strategy Analytics, there are now 162.3 million Samsung Tizen devices installed worldwide, accounting for 12.7% of the global connected TV device installed base. The firm said Samsung was followed by LG’s webOS with 7.3%, Amazon Fire OS with 6.4%, Roku TV OS with 6.4% and Android TV with 5.9%.
The report said that Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox and Google Cast all saw their connected TV device share decrease in 2020.
“Samsung’s smart TV market leadership gives it a great foundation to sustain Tizen as the leading TV streaming platform for years to come,” said David Watkins, director of TV streaming platforms for Strategy Analytics, in a statement. “However, several other major players are also growing rapidly and many have the resources to build a serious challenge to Samsung if the strategic ambition is there.”
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How the different connected TV platforms stack up in terms of global market share does not reflect regional variation in platform usage. Strategy Analytics said Roku is the leading platform in the U.S., 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 LG’s webOS ranks second in 13 markets.
“The transition to global internet-based television and video services during this decade will be enabled by smart TV systems controlled by a few leading technology vendors,” said David Mercer, vice president and principal analyst at Strategy Analytics, in a statement. “As streaming on TVs becomes the preferred video viewing behavior, content providers will rely increasingly on the UI, analytics, advertising and content discovery capabilities of connected TV platforms and the firms controlling them. As we are seeing in smartphones today, we envisage strategic conflicts eventually emerging between content and TV streaming platforms which will raise challenging structural and regulatory questions.”