Roku Is the Most Popular Streaming Player, But the Amazon Fire TV & Smart TVs Are Gaining Ground

This week Cord Cutters News surveyed over 3,000 of our readers on a wide range of cord cutting topics. One of the questions we asked was “what streaming player do you use?” From these answers, we can get a fairly good idea of what most cord cutters are using to stream their movies and TV shows.

(It is important to note we asked what devices “do they use” not what they owned. So, a DVD player or old game system that is no longer used is not counted in this poll.)

A Roku player or Roku TV is used by 67.9% of our readers. That gives Roku a massive lead over the next most popular streaming player: the Amazon Fire TV, which has 36.6% of the vote.

Here is a break down of the top 10 streaming devices according to our readers:

• Roku: 67.9%
• Fire TV: 36.6%
• Smart TVs: 30.8%
• Laptops & Desktop Computers: 28.4%
• Apple TV: 16.6%
• Chromecast: 15.2%
• Game Systems (PS4, Xbox One, etc.): 9.8%
• DVR: 7.2%
• Air TV: 6%
• Nvidia Shield: 4.8%

As with every survey we have ever done Roku is leading with cord cutters. Yet its numbers are slightly down. In our summer 2018 survey 69.1% of all cord cutters used a Roku player. Amazon’s Fire TV is continuing to grow. Numbers put it up to 36.6% from 34.8% in the summer of 2019.

The device that is losing the most market share is the Apple TV. In the summer of 2018 the Apple TV accounted for 23.5% of all Cord Cutters News’ readers.

The biggest jump came with smart TVs. In the summer of 2018 smart TVs accounted for 24.5% of all cord cutters. Now that number has jumped to 30.8% in 2019. The question now is how many of these smart TVs is a Roku TV or an Amazon Fire TV Edition Smart TV.

The growth of smart TVs is something Roku’s CEO predicted in 2016. In an interview with the Business Insider, Roku’s CEO Anthony Wood said, “We sell more streaming players than anyone, but it’s also probably not the most important part of our business. The most important part of our distribution business is TV licensing.”  Now one in three smart TVs sold in the United States is a Roku TV and both Google and Amazon have moved into offering a smart TV OS.

When will smart TVs overtake streaming players as the main way cord cutters stream content? Right now, Amazon, Roku, and Google are fighting to be the go-to smart TV OS.

What do you think of how our readers voted? Leave us a comment and let us know.

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