this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2026
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My friend, we don't need to speculate. The industry gives us all the info we need.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sixty-one-percent-of-us-internet-households-use-their-smart-tv-as-the-primary-streaming-device-according-to-parks-associates-302653704.html
https://worldscreen.com/majority-of-u-s-viewers-use-smart-tvs-as-primary-streaming-devices/
Right now, it's about consolidating power at the TV operating system level. Make the TV replace devices like a Roku box and you get all that data. 61% of US households use the TV as their main streaming device. So that's about 82 million households. Some stats get as high as 70%
https://www.aidigital.com/blog/connected-tv-stats
So connected TV use is growing at a huge rate.
It's a hard number to get, but I've seen estimates that smart tvs are subsidized by about $200 per unit based on a value of $120 per viewer per year on days collection when they're connected. Average about 2 people per household and a 3 year lifespan of the TV, and that's $720-$200, so $500 net profit from data sales on average per unit. So already that's close to $40-$50 billion in data sales alone across the smart TV market in the US. Without adding in hidden bells and whistles to collect more data.
But the gap the industry sees isn't people wisely not connecting their TVs. It's that there's so many connected devices! They want the TV to just replace some of them.
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/392601/89-of-us-households-now-have-streaming-video-se.html
And it's working. Simply causing TV OS bloat to try and get ahead of human laziness and undercut Roku is the goal. With huge gains to be made without spending a penny on things like embedded sims cards and cellular service for 40 million TVs sold annually in the US to collect data on a group that's already shifting patterns to the TV as the primary device. Why bother? It's wasted money for most units sold. If companies just sold cheap, subsidized TVs that demanded they must be connected to work, then that's the easiest, cheapest, highest profit angle to play.