Roku aka Roku Players is going to bring its TV OS to the UK. Roku has become extremely popular in North America, and now the company wants to expand its services to the UK, according to the recent announcement during IFA today. On the other hand, Hisense UK is working towards releasing the first-ever TV, which will be powered by Roku during the fourth quarter of 2019. Beforehand, the television OS of Roku has only been available across North America, and they have over in the Television sets such as Sharp and TCL. Even the US arm of Hisense already had a taste of incorporating the OS in its TV sets.
The reason why the Roku TV OS has been a success across North America is that the software is straightforward, and it is also user-friendly to use. The experts who reviewed the TCL 6-Series television in the previous year were delighted with the simplified software that was present in the core of the television set.
One of the most crucial selling points of the Television Sets powered by Roku TV OS is that the OS features every single one of the streaming apps. Moreover, this is something that is not seen in the Fire TV platform from Amazon. Fire TV even lacked the native support of YouTube at the beginning. However, Amazon incorporated the popular YouTube app after a remarkable spat with Google.
The smart Roku Televisions will also receive continued OS support. The company said that it would maintain tight control over the process of the update. By the looks of it, the update process can be pushed to older TVs given that manufacturers do not support the OS anymore. Roku’s crucial competitor Amazon also came up with an announcement during the 2019 IFA. Amazon also said that the company would expand different editions of the Fire TV for its users. The new updates would be introduced to the TVs that are currently using the Fire TV Platform as the built-in operating system.
Just like Roku, Amazon has also revealed that it is partnering with significant manufacturers for releasing TVs with the Fire TV platform across Europe. By the looks of it, both Amazon and Roku have sold the standalone streaming hardware right outside North America for a long time. The expansion of Roku and Amazon television OS platform will enhance the competition among both the companies.
The international launch of Roku suggests that the company is increasingly expanding its software services than the hardware. Back in 2018, the CEO of Roku described that the company is more like an ad business rather than a hardware business.