TV platforms reign supreme in streaming and Roku is leading globally based on its strength in North America. Samsung Tizen is ahead in Europe while Android TV is dominating in Asia, according to Conviva.

Platform diversity
Video streaming grew by 13% year-over-year in Q2 2021, as measured in viewing time. TV platforms take the lion's share of global streaming viewing time with 73% (up from 55% in 2019), followed by phones (11%), PCs (10%), tablets (5%), and other (1%).

Unlike the Android and iOS duopoly in mobile operating systems, the TV platform space is still very diverse and varies greatly between regions. While Roku is often cited as the leading TV platform, it has a small market share in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and South America.

- "Big screens have been gaining popularity all over the world for the last several quarters. In Q2 2021, globally, Roku made up 31% of global viewing time, while Amazon Fire TV and Samsung TV had decent showings at 18% and 12%, respectively," said Conviva in its Q2 2021 report. "While Africa and the Americas had clear devices that led in the big screen category, Europe and Oceania had much more device diversity."

Samsung Tizen is leading in Europe and South America, Android TV in Asia, Chromecast in Oceania, and Linux (set-top boxes) in Africa.


 TV platform market share by region, measuring in viewing hours. Source: Conviva

Streaming quality improvements
Conviva also noted that average video bitrates in Q2 2021 were up 8% year-over-year to 8.34 Mb/s on Smart TVs, up 4% to 7.1 Mb/s on streaming boxes, and up 20% to 7.77 Mb/s on game consoles.

At the same time, average video start times and buffering improved across Smart TVs, streaming boxes, and game consoles.

What will the future hold? It is difficult to predict but Conviva did note that Roku's dominance is fading, from a 43% share in Q2 2019 to 31% in Q2 2021, "as smart TV-only devices including Samsung TV, LG TV, Android TV, and Vizio TV each increased in share".

Conviva: Methodology
Data for Conviva’s State of Streaming report was primarily collected from Conviva’s proprietary sensor technology currently embedded in 3.3 billion streaming video applications, measuring in excess of 500 million unique viewers watching 180 billion streams per year with nearly 2 trillion real-time transactions per day across more than 180 countries. 
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