For years Roku has had the market cornered on company-sponsored channels and private, indie channels alike. The ability for anyone to push out content within a private channel on Roku has helped move their reportable numbers into the thousands of channels. This is somewhat of a meaningless statistic because most of those are completely uninteresting, but when compared to Apple’s ecosystem of (classically) fewer than ten supported applications, the difference is stark.

However, as other devices are competing with Roku’s lineup, they’ve seen their numbers slip year after year. Presenting at this year’s CES, Parks Associates showed that Roku had decreased from 46% to 29% market share since 2013 as both Amazon and Google have introduced multiple alternatives. These alternatives, Chromecast and FireTV (and Stick), are sold at very competitive price points with compelling media streaming service options. Now with these competitors and the coming age of a la carte TV, HBO Go, and Sling on other streaming boxes, Roku will need to keep innovating features and aggregating services to continue to compete.

From the article "Roku Adds Voice Search to Upgraded Roku 3" by Ryan Flake.

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