Providing Market Intelligence for 40 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

A ‘move-in-ready' house now means smart home devices are inside

For a home or apartments to be move-in-ready today, smart devices of all kinds need to be part of the space for 25 percent of U.S. broadband customers, according to new research from Parks Associates....

Privacy Is IoT’s Highest Hurdle

Nearly 20% of U.S. broadband households own a smart home device, or a household object that connects to the Internet, and nearly 45% of U.S. broadband households plan to buy a smart home device in the...

Hulu Is Slowing, Hits 12 Million Subscribers Versus Netflix’s 81 Million

But growing membership is harder to keep up at the same clip for all streaming services, as more and more companies launch their own online platforms. As consumers shift more of their entertainment di...

Canada: Broadband households and interests on smart home services

Brad Russell, research director, Connected Homes, Parks Associates, said: “Canada’s security market is stable but with high attrition rates, which makes market expansion difficult, and the security pr...