Roku is still the most popular media player on the US market, according to a survey. Amazon and Google are tied for second and Apple is fourth. Apple saw a major boost in sales in late 2015 with the release of the new Apple TV hardware.

Only four relevant players
The four major players accounted for 94% of the total US market for media players in 2015, up from 86% in 2014, according to a survey from Parks Associates. New entrants such as Nvidia and Razor failed to make a significant impact, it appears.

In 2015, Roku sold the most media streamers with a 30% share of sales. Amazon and Google are virtually tied at 22% each. Apple sold 20% of all media streamers in 2015.


For comparison the numbers in 2014 were: 34% for Roku, 23% for Google, 16% for Amazon, and 13% for Apple TV.

Parks Associates noted that 33% of Roku sales were Roku sticks, whereas roughly 75% of Amazon’s sales were Fire TV sticks. The rest were TV boxes. Google sells almost exclusively Chromecast sticks. 50% of total unit sales in 2015 were sticks, the report noted. Those numbers taken into account, Roku are Apple were essentially tied for selling most boxes in 2015, Parks Associates noted.

All four companies launched new hardware in 2015 but the Apple TV box was long overdue after more than 3.5 years without a hardware update. Parks Associates noted that Apple TV unit sales surged after the release of the new hardware. Of the four manufacturers, Apple experienced the greatest unit sales increase year-over-year in 2015 based on the new hardware that was released late in the year (October 2015).

Parks Associates estimates that 86 million media streamers will be sold globally in 2019.

- Source: Parks Associates