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

One in three smart home owners control them through a network, like Alexa

More people are buying smart home devices, and connecting them through platforms or systems like smart speakers and hubs. So says a new report from Parks Associates which found that 35 percent of smar...

SVODs Are Hot, But Subscribers Are Still Fickle

A new study from Dallas-based research firm Parks Associates has found that 20% of US broadband households (approximately 90 million homes) cancelled at least one OTT or SVOD subscription in 2015....

Ranking The Most Popular Sports OTT Networks

NFL Game Pass is the most popular sports OTT video service in the U.S., according to Parks Associates, although at this point sports video services are still a relatively niche market. Overall, jus...

Smart home devices are 'valuable' to 75% of those who use them

As it turns out, smart home owners are really satisfied customers. Give them a chance to buy a connected device, like a smart thermostat, and nearly 75 percent of them are really happy with what they...