Roku CEO, Anthony Wood, spoke at a Morgan Stanley conference on the future of the TV market. In doing so, he put forward quite interesting theses. Accordingly, there will be a consolidation of the operating systems. Wood expects manufacturers like LG, Samsung and the US-popular Vizio to move away from their own platforms.
Instead, only a few, manufacturer-independent systems should prevail. Of course, Wood also means Roku’s own OS, Roku OS. He primarily sees Android TV / Google TV and Amazon’s Fire TV as rivals. However, it currently looks as if both LG and Samsung are trying to get partners enthusiastic about their proprietary webOS and Tizen systems. So far, however, those efforts have met with little success.
There are also “exotics” such as Panasonic’s MyHomeScreen. According to the Roku boss, none of this is effective. Advertising partners would like to see a consolidation of the platforms because it will simplify their efforts. And for TV manufacturers, it is becoming increasingly important to monetize their systems even after the actual TV purchase. Unfortunately, Roku in particular already provided negative examples of aggressive advertising, which annoyed viewers very much.
Of course, Wood’s views also fit in with the fact that Roku is said to be planning its own TV sets. They probably want to use this to supplement their streaming players, which have also been available in Europe and Germany since 2021. However, although Roku is one of the leading providers in the USA with its Roku OS, it is still one of the smaller lights internationally. According to analysts, Samsung Tizen had a market share of 34.4% in 2020. webOS accounted for 15.9% and Android TV for 15.5%. Roku could only get 5.8%.
Since then, however, Roku has been expanding aggressively. For me, however, the advertising and recommendations in the TV operating systems are getting to be too much. That’s why I prefer to use an Apple TV 4K for apps and the like.