Apple Leads Connected-TV Player Market

BOSTON: Strategy Analytics projects that the market for connected-TV players will reach nearly 12 million units worldwide this year, with Apple accounting for 4 million of those devices.

The report, Connected TV Players: Another Battlefield in the Smart TV War, predicts that the global sales for streaming- or Internet-TV set-top boxes will more than double in 2011 compared to 2010. More than 8 percent of U.S. households now own a connected TV player, compared to 7 percent in Europe. Apply is said to account for 32 percent of the total connected-TV player market for the year.

Strategy Analytics also found that Apple TV users are spending more money on TV shows and movies. Of respondents, 30 percent of Apple TV owners said they rented movies or TV shows, compared to 20 percent of users of other devices.

“Apple is leading this nascent market, which it still considers a ‘hobby’,” said Jia Wu, the senior analyst at the Connected Home Devices (CHD) service. “As Apple prepares for its expected launch of smart TVs in 2012, rival platforms must accelerate their development plans to keep Apple from running away with the connected-TV business, as it has done in smartphones and digital music.”