Last year, Apple held 40.6 percent of the global streaming device market according to a Frost & Sullivan report. The annual update to its Streaming Media Devices study showed that the market nearly doubled to about 31 million units sold in 2014 thanks largely to a surge of about 10 million Chromecast shipments. Roku came in third with a 13 percent share, while Amazon trailed with 8 percent. (WD is lumped in other, presumably.) A Parks Associates report says that people spend more time on Roku devices, however, with 37 percent of the 2014 US streaming usage pie. Google’s Chromecast accounted for 19 percent of usage while Apple accounted for just 17 percent.

ONE LESS REMOTE CONTROL AND ONE LESS HDMI DEVICE
Parks Associates estimates that 86 million streaming media devices will be sold globally in 2019, whereas Frost and Sullivan is more cautious with an estimate of 40 million sales in 2020. Either way, those numbers pale in comparison to the 50 million iOS devices Apple sells every three months (the company has sold over a billion iOS devices in total). The new Apple TV makes it more difficult for Roku, Google, Amazon, and others to attract the attention of all those Apple households now that a single microconsole can play iOS games, download iOS apps, and stream any media you own, whether it’s over AirPlay, purchased from the iTunes store, or stolen from The Pirate Bay.

From the article "First Click: The new Apple TV moved to HDMI 1 in just four days" by Thomas Ricker.