Fresh data released Monday confirms what Fox Corporation's checkbook has been saying since June: the operating system running your smart TV has quietly become the most valuable piece of real estate in American media.
Hub Entertainment Research's 2026 “Evolution of the TV Set” study â its annual survey of 2,500 US consumers ages 16 to 74, conducted in May â found that Roku powers the primary television for 37% of streaming viewers and Amazon's Fire TV accounts for another 17%. Together, the two platforms run more than half of US streaming households' most-watched TV set. Samsung's Tizen, Google's Android TV, LG's webOS, and Apple TV split the rest.
That number â more than half â is the structural fact at the center of Fox Corporation's announced $22 billion acquisition of Roku. If over half of Americans are watching their most-used TV through a Roku or Fire TV interface, then whoever controls those interfaces controls the first thing more than 100 million households see when they turn on the TV. That is not just a technology story. It is a property rights story.
Roku and Fire TV Are Running Away From the Field
Parks Associates' April 2026 Streaming Video Tracker, which measures which connected TV platform US broadband households use most frequently, places Roku OS at 28% and Samsung Tizen at 23% of usage by that broader metric â but Hub's data, which focuses specifically on the primary TV set used most for streaming, tells an even starker story. Among viewers actively using their favorite set for streaming, Roku's 37% and Fire TV's 17% leave the competition fighting for the remaining 46%.
Hub's data also reveals a qualitative gap that does more damage to Samsung and LG than a market-share chart alone can capture. Home-screen suggestions from Apple TV, Fire TV, Android TV, and Roku are all measurably more likely to prompt actual viewing than suggestions from Samsung Tizen or LG webOS. A viewer whose TV makes a recommendation they actually follow is a viewer…