Advanced Television

Apple TV 31% of streaming TV hardware market

November 6, 2015

Apple released its first upgrade to its Apple TV last week, and as usual the first buyers of the latest gadget are its biggest fans. While the average person who buys an Apple product spends $788 per year on Apple gear, those who bought the latest Apple TV spent $1,161 in the same period, according to Slice Intelligence.

More than 90 per cent of the new Apple TV buyers are men, and the majority are between the ages of 35 and 44. While most streaming TV buyers across all brands fit this age and gender profile, on average, buyers of these devices are about 64 per cent male—indicating an early adopter skew. Another clue: seven percent of new Apple TV buyers also purchased an Apple Watch, about five times the rate of the overall online shopping population, which is 1.3 per cent.

Among those who had purchased a TV streaming device over the past two years, most of them bought an Apple TV. However, the vast majority had not bought an Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast, or Fire TV during the period. But Apple TV has not necessarily brought a new crop of buyers to this market; as Apple hasn’t introduced a major update to the AppleTV since 2011. So, anyone who bought a previous generations of the Apple TV before November 2012 would be included in this first-time buyer category.

Sales of TV streaming devices have been flat over the period, with sales only surging during the Christmas shopping period, as well as at times where prices have fallen; most notably when Amazon introduced the $35 Fire TV stick in November 2014 and when the Apple TV decreased in price last March, from $99 to $70. With the addition of the new Apple TV, Apple has the largest share of the streaming TV hardware market, at 31 per cent, followed closely by Amazon, at 28 per cent.

Categories: Articles, Equipment, OTT, Research, STB