With no new streaming video player in two and a half years, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is losing ground in the market. Apple's set-top box, Apple TV, slipped to fourth place in U.S. sales of streaming media devices last year, research firm Parks Associates reported Thursday.
Roku continues to lead in streaming media device sales, accounting for 34% of units sold in 2014. Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) was second with 23%. Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) overtook Apple for third place. Amazon grabbed 16% of the market, compared with 13% for Apple.
Together the top four brands accounted for 86% of all streaming media devices sold to U.S. broadband households in 2014, Parks said.
"The market consolidation around these four brands forces new entrants to develop more creative features and functionality to tap into the strong consumer demand for streaming content," Parks analyst Barbara Kraus said in a statement. "Devices with additional functionality such as the Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) Compute Stick may be a sign of things to come, where streaming is not the primary function but an extra feature to provide additional value."
From the article "Apple TV Falls Behind In Streaming Device Market" by Patrick Seitz.
Many connected products have security weaknesses that leave home Wi-Fi networks vulnerable to being hacked. In fact, 47% of households with broadband Wi-Fi express privacy or security concerns about a...
“While pay TV penetration has declined among U.S. broadband households, adoption has remained steady among Spanish-preferred and bilingual households over the past few years,” Brett Sappington, Parks...
According to research from Parks Associates from this past May, Roku led all of its competitors in sales from first quarter 2015 to first quarter 2016, with its set-top boxes accounting for 30% of the...
While the home is shaping up to be the battleground, cable operators and other service providers are jostling to position themselves as the aggregation and management point of this emerging class of s...