Strategy Analytics predicts that Roku will, at 52M devices, have 70% more OTT devices than its next closest competitor, Sony Playstation, by year end
Strategy Analytics predicts there will be 52 million Roku-enabled devices in use by year-end — The Roku OTT ecosystem further extended …
Context & Ripple Effects
Strategy Analytics' 52M-device forecast extends a race Roku has been winning for years: back in 2017, eMarketer already had Roku leading on monthly users ahead of Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV. The 70% gap over Sony PlayStation is the first time the comparison frames Roku's lead against a single hardware rival rather than a field of streaming sticks.
What the forecast got right is the arc that followed: Roku's OS moved from boxes into TVs, where it claimed a 38% US smart-TV market share in 2020, and the installed base kept compounding to more than 70M accounts by end of 2022. Device count was never the endgame — it is the inventory base for Roku's ad and subscription platform business.
First-order effects
- Roku enters year-end 2019 with a decisive installed-base lead over Sony PlayStation, giving advertisers a larger OTT footprint than any competing device ecosystem.
- Sony's PlayStation, the next-closest competitor at roughly 30M OTT devices on Strategy Analytics' math, is positioned as a console-first platform competing against a company whose core product is the OS itself.
Second-order effects
- Competing device makers are pushed toward the same playbook Roku proved out — licensing their platforms to TV manufacturers — a shift visible in Roku's subsequent 38% share of US smart TVs.
- Content owners and ad buyers concentrate spending on the largest installed base, reinforcing Roku's pricing power and feeding the platform revenue line that later reached $4.15B in 2025 per the related coverage.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, OTT distribution consolidates around a handful of device operating systems where scale begets ad revenue begets more scale — a structure closer to mobile's iOS/Android duopoly than to the fragmented set-top market this 2019 forecast described.
- A dominant installed base also makes the platform itself strategically valuable, consistent with later reporting that Roku has been in talks about a sale — scale that began as a device-count lead becomes an acquisition target.
The trend: OTT distribution is consolidating around a single dominant device OS, where installed-base scale converts directly into advertising and platform revenue.