Apple TV lost more market share during the holiday season

Apple’s latest attempt to revolutionize our TV screens is continuing to lose steam.

According to the latest data from eMarketer: Apple TV “is at the bottom of the U.S. connected TV market, behind Google Chromecast and Roku, with its share shrinking.” Ouch.

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That underwhelming assessment comes over a year after Apple relaunched Apple TV (in October 2015) with great expectations. But the new Apple TV hardware and its dedicated remote have drawn mixed reviews, particularly from the gaming community. And even as Apple continues to add more apps, it still lacks a dedicated subscription service that Apple has reportedly been trying to pull together for several years now.

As a result, eMarketer reports that Apple is used by just 11.9 percent of connected TV consumers. That’s down from 12.5 percent in September.

It also continues a steady drop from 12.6 percent in 2015 and 13.5 percent in 2014, according to eMarketer.

Apple had no doubt hoped to give Apple TV a bit of nudge late last year when it announced its “TV” app to make it easier to find and discover new shows. But that didn’t seem to make much different for holiday shoppers.

By contrast, Google’s Chromecast climbed to 19.9 percent over the holiday quarter, up from 18.4 percent in September and 16.2 percent in 2015.

Roku may have been the biggest winner this quarter, coming in second with 18.2 percent, up from 15.2 percent in September.

Of course, despite declining sales, it’s quite possible that Apple could be pulling in more revenue on the connected TV hardware. Apple TV is still priced at three times the average cost of Roku and six times the cost of a Chromecast unit. It will be interesting to see if Apple considers a price cut for Apple TV this year in the hopes that more devices could drive more content and app purchases.