Study: Apple TV Skews Male, Gen X

Apple still hasn't said how many consumers have shelled out for the new apps-friendly Apple TV box, but new research offers a strong sense of who’s snapping them up: men, and lots of them. According to Slice Intelligence’s recent study of a panel of 3 million online shoppers about 90% of buyers of the new, fourth-generation Apple TV are men, compared with 70.6% for Google’s Chromecast adapter. Roku players are apparently the most popular with women.

And the new Apple TV isn’t necessarily a big hit with millennials, as the greatest concentration of buyers were Generation Xers aged 35-44. Just 5% of new Apple TV buyers were 18-24.

The new Apple TV enjoyed a “huge first day” when it became available Oct. 26, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, and the research seems to bear that out. Post-launch, the new Apple TV rapidly snagged about 13% of the market, Slice Technologies found. That was enough to put it on the map, but it still trailed other platforms such as Chromecast, the prior-generation Apple TV products, Roku players and Amazon Fire TV. But the combined mix of new and previous-generation sales allowed the Apple TV platform to leap past Fire TV, according to the study.

The average Apple buyer also spends $788 per year on the company’s gear, Slice found; Apple TV buyers spent $1,161 on the company’s products over the same period. And 7% of Apple TV buyers also purchased an Apple Watch — about five times the rate of the overall online-shopping population.