The time for market consolidation has still not come in the highly competitive TVOS space, with new actors joining the party over the last quarters. In Europe, the market is dominated by Google’s Android TV/Google TV and Samsung’s Tizen. The latter relies on Samsung’s position as the number one TV brand, while the latter benefits from its numerous partnerships with strongly distributed medium- and low-end TV brands. For instance, in France, Samsung touts more than 5 million Smart TVs. LG’s webOS follows in the third position. But the market does not lack challengers, already existing or new ones. Roku and Amazon accelerate their global expansion Suffering from a strong decline in the streaming sticks market, as part of households’ growing adoption of Smart TVs to stream content, Roku and Amazon have yet to consolidate their position in the Smart TV-only market outside North America. For Roku, the expansion in Latin America has already proven to be successful, especially in Mexico, where it claims to be the leading TV streaming platform, and in Brazil, where Roku TVs have been gaining traction since their launch in 2020. In 2023, the company introduced Roku-powered TV sets in six new markets to broaden its Central (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua) and South (Chile) American coverage. The long-awaited expansion in Europe finally became a reality at the end of 2021, with the launch of Roku-powered TCL TV sets in the UK. Germany followed a year later, at the end of 2022, through licensing agreements with Metz Blue and TCL. Over the last quarters, Roku has multiplied its number of partners in those two countries, and now works with a dozen TV brands in the UK, and six in Germany. Roku TVs are also available in Australia. For its international expansion outside North America, Amazon also targeted the UK (and Ireland) as well as Germany (and Austria), and it added Italy and Spain in 2023, through partnerships with Panasonic and TCL. Amazon-built TV sets have been introduced in the UK, Germany and Mexico as well. The white-label OS providers, serious competitors to manufacturers and tech giants? Then come the white-label OS providers, which have been particularly active in the last months. Mid 2023, Zeasn announced the acquisition of Foxxum. The newly created structure now boasts a significant reach of 85 million devices, with an AVOD&FAST monetization engine, rlaxx TV, inside the new Whale OS 4 ecosystem. Announced in 2022, Xperi’s TiVo OS was introduced in several European countries at the end of last year, with Vestel-built TV sets. Deals with other OEMs like Sharp have also been signed, and Xperi expects to power 7 million TVs by 2025. The most recent newcomer is...
