Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Wall Street isn’t sure Roku can lead cord cutters to the promised land

One of the secrets of Roku's success has been its expansion beyond its roots as a set top box maker (a term the company tries to avoid). To do this, Roku CEO Anthony Wood built a loyal customer following by moving the company away from only selling its own boxes, instead now licensing its software to TV makers, so they can ship screens with the company's streaming TV platform built-in. This is a much higher margin business than selling streaming hardware, and almost one-third of so-called smart TVs sold last year included Roku's software.

Roku has also developed and licensed streaming programming of its own, backed by advertising. The Roku Channel, available on all its platforms, was 2019's most popular ad-backed streaming channel, ahead of rivals Pluto TV and Crackle, according to market research firm Parks Associates. That's another business that yields higher margins than producing set top boxes.

From the article "Wall Street isn’t sure Roku can lead cord cutters to the promised land" by Aaron Pressman.

Previously In The News

Is It Time to Bring Back the TV Antenna?

Over 80% of us subscribe to some form of pay TV service, whether cable- or-satellite based. We get hundreds of channels, most of which we do not watch. And while the service is generally good, the mon...

Original Content And World Domination: New Report Shows Netflix is Absolutely Killing It

The driving force behind these mammoth figures seem to be Netflix’s endeavour to create excellent original content – pouring an insane amount of cash into shows like Stranger Things, House of Cards an...

Netflix powers up theChive to promote Marvel's 'Iron Fist'

Streaming video overall is coming from a place of strength. Netflix’s customer growth from last year’s Q3 exceeded expectations, and separate reports from January found streaming and over-the-top serv...

Streaming service bundles are a new way to attract subscribers

The demand for over-the-top (OTT) media services exploded when the global coronavirus pandemic forced millions of people to refrain from social gatherings and stringent lockdown measures heavily regul...