The global installed base of Smart TVs and Connected TV (CTV) devices will reach 4.2 billion units by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 9.6% from 2.65 billion in 2025, according to the latest report from Rethink TV. While Android-based platforms will account for nearly two-thirds of this expansion, the ecosystem is fracturing, with new OS contenders carving out regional footholds and formerly dominant platforms entering decline.

Android TV, Google’s flagship video platform, will expand dramatically, powered by a wave of integrations and sustained retail adoption. But cracks are showing; Chromecast OS is set to vanish entirely by the end of the forecast, and unlicensed AOSP forks are losing favor amid rising content security demands. Meanwhile, HarmonyOS (a forked Android variant developed by Huawei) has quietly built a domestic empire in China, projected to reach 932 million units globally by 2030.

RDK, once heralded as the open-source answer to Android’s dominance, will see its global installed base peak during the period, before contracting to 66.5 million. Its legacy in North American cable deployments is fading, and international traction remains sporadic.

New entrants are capitalizing on this fragmentation. India’s JioTele OS will surge to over 100 million units by 2030, thanks to bundled broadband and retail TV strategies. Titan OS, backed by TP Vision and Vestel, has emerged in Europe as a neutral, ad-friendly Linux platform. TiVo’s Linux-based TiVo OS also emerges, operating in tandem to the Android TV-based TiVo Stream.

Even niche platforms are making noise. ZEASN’s Whale OS, Roku’s white-label rival, is forecast to top 117 million units. Meanwhile, Ventura OS, launched by The Trade Desk to give advertisers more data transparency, looks doomed following the collapse of its Sonos partnership, leaving it without a hardware partner or deployment path.

The shift toward software-led ecosystems means that OS decisions are no longer just about UX – they’re about data, discovery, and monetization. “The OS is where the ad rails live, where the recommendation engines run, and where first-party data is collected,” said Rafi Cohen, Analyst at Rethink TV. “This is no longer a product or UX choice. It’s a hugely political and strategic one.”

Annual smart TV sales will continue to drive growth, climbing to 3.76 billion in 2030, while CTV device sales will decline slightly to 440 million, reflecting a shift toward integrated experiences. This tilt is most visible in mature markets, where HDMI dongles are being displaced by increasingly capable Smart TVs. But in price-sensitive regions, CTV devices still serve as retrofit solutions for legacy screens.

Rethink TV’s forecast draws on extensive modeling of OS-level market shares, OEM partnerships, app ecosystem dynamics, and regional video infrastructure. The report includes projections across five global regions, offering a granular view of where and how each OS will grow, or fall behind. Click here for an executive summary.

The increased interest among streaming networks to enter the live televised sports market will cause more fragmentation, challenging the domination of traditional broadcast networks. At the same time, the state of Regional Sports Networks is changing, affected primarily by 21st Century Fox’s sale of its RSNs to Disney.

These are among the findings of Market Intelligence’s “2019 Sports Report,” detailing the business of live televised sports.

“Live sports content is a highly valuable commodity in the television industry,” the report cites. “The current media landscape is challenging both operators and networks to maintain margins while traditional pay TV subscribers decline and programming expenses increase.”

According to the report, the NFL “arguably” produces the most valuable content on television and with contracts expiring with Fox, CBS and NBC in 2022 (and ESPN in 2021), the increasing interest among OTT players like Amazon Prime to enter the market will prompt new rights packages that reflect new realities.

“There are early discussions around breaking up the AFC and NFC packages for the next round of negotiations, with digital service providers increasingly expressing interest in bidding on streaming rights,” the report said.

In addition, with cable operators continuing to hemorrhage subscribers via cord cutting (many of which are trying to escape expensive sports channels) and the cost of rights packages on the rise, this could have an impact on the value of so-called “linear” (broadcast) vs. digital rights, according to the report.

“An area of interest for the next couple of years is how the leagues will decide to distinguish between linear and digital rights,” the report noted. “The cable bundle continues to lose subscribers, negatively impacting network margins. At the same time, digital rights have thus far been packaged and sold separately from linear rights. If this continues, there could come a time in the next few years where one entity owns digital rights and another owns linear. In this scenario, the value of local linear rights would diminish, at least slightly, as there would be—for the first time in a local market—competition for viewership in protected in-market territory.”

For Regional Sports Networks, there have been several new entrants in the past year, such as ESPN+, YouTube TV, Amazon, Sinclair and FloSports, that have had an impact. But perhaps the biggest effect comes from the sale of 22 RSNs to Disney as part of its $71.3 billion acquisition from 21st Century Fox, according to the report.

“The surviving Fox entity will focus on live sports and news but is exiting the local sports rights business, citing major differences from local versus national sports rights segments,” the report said. “New Fox's more focused strategy will presumably make it a bigger force in the national sports segment.”

Despite the rise in per subscriber costs in the pay-TV market for sports (for RSNs, it’s an average of $13.30 per subscriber, overall, $5.83 when adding in all multichannel networks), the report notes that the costs still pale in comparison to the even higher expense of attending games in person.

“While the cost to access live sporting events as part of channel lineups has increased over the years—and fees within the pay TV industry are head and shoulders above the non-sports channels—the cost to attend games in person is even more eye-popping,” the report said. “From a sports fan's perspective, there is value in paying industry-leading sports programming fees, compared to following a team in person or being disconnected from tuning in.”

The bottom line is that for televised sports, the disruption caused by the increasing number of digital newcomers (including the various professional leagues’ own streaming services) coupled with increased sports rights costs will require viewers and networks to fasten their seatbelts for a bumpy ride.

“Networks are in a predicament as there seems to be no sign that sports rights fees will slow and yet cord cutting and cord shaving is causing most sports channels to bleed subscribers, putting increasing pressure on the bottom line,” the report concludes. “And the fact that most sports rights are wrapped up in long-term deals for many years to come makes it difficult for channels like NBCSN and FS1 to become a powerful competitor to ESPN.”