We’ve been hearing rumors for many years that Apple is going to launch a standalone smart TV but that hasn’t happened yet. It did launch an updated Apple TV set-top box in October 2015 but that hasn’t done much to improve its fortunes in the connected TV market. Latest data from eMarketer reveals that Apple TV continues to bleed market share as it sits at the bottom of the connected TV market in the United States.
eMarketer’s report mentions that the Apple TV “is at the bottom of the U.S. connected TV market, behind Google Chromecast and Roku, with its share shrinking.”
The current Apple TV hardware hasn’t done much to steal users away from rivals that offer far greater functionality, including the ability to play casual Android games on the big screen. Apple continues to add more apps to its TV platform but it has a lot of catching up to do in that respect.
According to the report, the Apple TV currently only accounts for 11.9 percent of connected TV users and that’s down 0.6 percent from September 2015. On the other hand, rival Chromecast saw its market share increase to 19.9 percent over the holiday period last year from 18.4 percent in September and 16.2 percent in 2015.
Apple’s future TV plans are not known at this point in time. There have been rumors that the company is trying to create a standalone TV streaming service but that is yet to materialize.
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