Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

Roku OS Missing Features Explained: Discovery and Developer Limits

Roku's market position has a way of making the platform look more capable than it is. Across U.S. broadband households, Roku OS accounts for 28% of connected TV platform usage, ahead of Samsung Tizen at 23%, with Amazon Fire TV, LG webOS, and Vizio SmartCast trailing at a distance, according to Parks Associates research.    

Parks Associates Director Michael Goodman puts the stakes plainly: operating systems determine what content consumers see, how services are positioned, and how advertising is delivered. With AI-driven search and  personalization becoming the new competitive standard for TV operating systems, the firm argues that platform control will only matter more in the years ahead. This is the context in which Roku's specific shortcomings land.           

What they may not yet prove is that Roku has closed the gap on the deeper AI-driven discovery layer Parks Associates identifies as the next competitive frontier. The firm argues that AI-driven personalization, the kind that doesn't just catalog content but anticipates it, is where platform competition is heading. Roku's What to Watch feature aggregates titles across services, which is useful.

Roku's 28% share is stable and its value proposition is real. According to Parks Associates, the platform earns its position for a wide range of users, particularly those who primarily want free content, simple setup, and a reliable experience without active management. Nothing in this analysis changes that.

Parks Associates projects that AI-driven personalization will become the standard competitive axis for TV operating systems in the coming years, with platform ecosystems growing more consequential as that shift plays out.

From the Cord-Cutters.gadgethacks article, "Roku vs other smart TV platforms: default choice versus deliberate choice

Previously In The News

OTT Market Strong In U.S. And Growing In Europe

All data is from the recently released OTT Video Market Tracker from Parks Associates. “OTT is definitely gaining traction across Europe. We are seeing new OTT video services spring up but not as m...

OTT Churn: Netflix Has Lowest Rate in 2015

Churn isn’t just an issue for traditional pay TV providers. Over-the-top services suffer it as well, of course. Parks Associates revealed OTT data yesterday showing that at the end of 2015, approximat...

Pay TV Operators Need To Be Ready For Anything, Thus The Focus On Agility And New Operations Models

“Pay TV operators have always had rich content libraries but the content was hidden behind archaic user interfaces. A next-generation UI combined with recommendation boosts consumption and monetizatio...

Want to Watch Zombies 24/7? There’s a Pay Site for That

Jashin Yeh Panza, whose father is the star of the Chinese brush-painting service, says one 90-something-year-old customer calls her office if she isn’t regularly uploading new videos. “She [said] she...