Roku and Samsung continue to dominate the US connected TV platform market, underlining how control of the operating system layer is becoming increasingly central to streaming distribution, advertising and audience discovery.
New data from Parks Associates shows Roku accounts for 28% of primary connected TV usage in US internet households, ahead of Samsung’s Tizen on 23%.
The figures point to a market where a small number of platforms control the main route into streaming services, shaping what viewers see first on the home screen and how apps are surfaced, monetised and promoted. Parks said Amazon Fire TV, LG webOS and Vizio SmartCast remain in the next tier, while Apple tvOS, Android TV and games consoles account for smaller shares.
Michael Goodman, director of entertainment at Parks Associates, said platform control is now a critical battleground. “Control of the platform layer is central to competition in the connected TV market,” he said, arguing that operating systems influence not just discovery, but also how advertising is delivered and measured.
The concentration at platform level comes as smart TVs increasingly replace external devices as the main gateway to streaming. Parks said earlier this year that 61% of US internet households now use a smart TV as their primary streaming device, with Samsung leading within smart TV operating systems on a most-used basis among smart TV owners, even as Roku stays ahead when all connected TV device categories are included.
For content providers and advertisers, the message is clear: strong distribution partnerships with the leading TV OS platforms are becoming more important as those environments take on a bigger role in search, recommendations, data capture and ad sales. Parks added that the growing use of AI for discovery and personalisation is likely to strengthen the influence of platform ecosystems further in the years ahead.
