Last week Cord Cutters News surveyed over 4,000 of our readers on a wide range of cord cutting topics. One of the questions we asked was “what streaming player do you use?” (Important note: we asked “what device do you use” not “what do you own”.) Once again Roku was the leader but Amazon’s Fire TV continues to see slow growth with our readers.
A Roku player or Roku TV is used by 68% of our readers – that is up slightly from 67.9% in the 2nd quarter of 2019. In second place was the Amazon Fire TV, with 38.4% of our readers saying they use one. This is up from 36.6% in the second quarter of 2019.
Here is a break down of the top 10 streaming devices according to our readers:
- Roku: 68%
- Fire TV: 38.4%
- Smart TVs: 31.2%
- Laptops & Desktop Computers: 26%
- Apple TV: 17%
- Chromecast: 12.7%
- Game Systems (PS4, Xbox One, etc.): 10.6%
- Air TV: 6.8%
- DVR: 6.3%
- Nvidia Shield: 5%
What might be the most interesting news here is 1 through 7 once again remained unchanged. The only change in our list this quarter is that the AirTV jumped DVRs to the #8 spot on our list. This recent stability in the devices viewers use seem to reinforce reports that Roku and Amazon are starting to separate themselves from their competition. That seems to become more clear as you see both Chromecast and the Apple TV have lost market share since the start of 2019.
It is way too early to declare Roku and Amazon as the winners for the most popular streaming players, but they seem to be controlling their own futures at this time. Yet as Roku and Amazon seem to be rising ahead as the most popular streaming players, a new battle is heating up: The battle for smart TVs and smart devices with a streaming player built-in.
What do you think of how our readers voted? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think are the best streaming players on the market right now.
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