Evan Shapiro Takes On The TV OS Wars, And The Brain Of The Television
In this interview from CES 2024, ESHAP owner and noted media cartographer Evan Shapiro dives into the OS Wars – whoever controls that data controls the “oil in the TV ecosystem.”
Evan Shapiro: Whoever controls the data really controls the oil in the television ecosystem. So I think that's going to be crucially important. And then, you know, in Google and in Amazon, you have two companies that are massive big tech platforms. If they can take over more and more shares of the CTV OS, you run the risk of a duopoly, like [what] exists in smartphones. Then you have this interesting intersection where Google is now getting much more serious about the CTV wars.
At the same time, the dongle is starting to disappear, and so a lot of shares of new sales are going to move from Roku sticks and Fire sticks to full-scale CTV smart televisions connected directly to the internet. And so there's an ability to reshape the market share of the ecosystem through that process. And then you have Xumo entering the field at the same time. The brain of the television is going to be a really important battlefield among some major players in the system.