Roku has for a long time dominated the streaming set-top box market. Many reports have Roku controlling over half of all streaming players in American households. According to our own surveys as many as 67% of our readers own a Roku player.
Yet the smart TV market was a market that Roku had little presence in until recently. Now in 2016 13% of all smart TVs sold run the Roku TV OS. Much of this growth comes from its partnership with TCL, which went from the ninth most popular TV brand in the United States in 2015 to the sixth most popular TV brand in 2016.
Roku does not seem to plan to stop at 13% of the market. It was announced at CES that Element Electronics will start selling Roku TVs. TCL also announced 25 new Roku TV models including a new high end line of Roku TVs that will include HDR and a more contemporary design.
Roku’s partnerships with TV manufacturers such as Sharp, TCL, Element, Hitachi, Hisense, and Insignia seems to be paying off for them, and the deals seem to be paying off for the brands too.
Having Roku on your smart TV means brands such as Sharp can focus on the hardware and let Roku manage the high development and upkeep costs of a smart TV OS. In the end this seems to be a win-win for everyone involved.
It will be interesting to see where Roku TV sales are in a year from now. As new competitors, such as the Amazon Fire TV Edition Smart TVs, come on the market it and new Roku HDR TVs could change up the smart TV world.
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