Smart TVs continue to make money for the manufacture after the sale by providing data to viewer measurement and consumer research companies and through all of those apps they integrate in the TV’s smart functions and subsequent app usage.
“This is a cutthroat industry,” Baxter went on to say. “It’s pretty ruthless. The greater strategy is I really don’t need to make money off the TV. I need to
cover my costs.”
Because money is "funny" inside companies, and because there's no platform sales without hardware sales, I would think that the relevant metric from an external perspective is total revenue (The change in fraction of revenue over the years is probably interesting too).