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

Top 5 markets disrupted by sharing economy apps

Sharing economy apps like Airbnb, Uber and HomeAdvisor have the ability to thrive and disrupt incumbent industries. We have identified the five top markets that could become the next frontier of digit...

Alert! Will the Cable Eco-System Begin To Crash Tomorrow?

And, oh yeah, there are already quite a number of STBs that allow for streaming content that includes programming from so-called broadcast and cable networks as well as the major streaming services su...

Netgear Announces Orbi Tri-band WiFi System for Greater Home WiFi Coverage

“The connected home has become more data hungry than ever, and video consumption is the primary driver,” says Parks Associates. “Consumers are streaming video to every available screen from an increas...

ONLINE VIDEO ROUND-UP: Twitter, Facebook, Versy Make Big Moves

A recent study by Parks Associates claims that more millennials pay for online video than any other age groups. Highlights include that 23 percent of those surveyed only watch video online, and 61 per...