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

Tech Execs: 2016 Will Be 4K’s Year in Live Sports Production

“You shoot a local soccer game with a camera or use your cell to shoot video and then play it on 4K TV,” he said, adding that taking photos in 4K and running them as a slideshow on TV is another prime...

Residential fiber is now table stakes for boosting NOI

A recent Parks Associates survey finds that about 4 in 10 U.S multi-dwelling apartment residents say they're open to bundling internet services with their monthly rent. What's more, over three-fourths...

It's Not Even Close: Apple, Samsung Smartphone Marketleaders

Apple and Samsung are leaving competitors LG and Motorola in the dust. New research from Parks Associates shows, for example, that LG has dropped to just 9% of consumer-reported brand share, behind Ap...

Using Someone Else’s Netflix Password Is Likely to Get Harder

Password sharing costs companies a lot of money. U.S. streaming platforms lost an estimated $2.5 billion in revenue in 2019 because of password sharing, and that amount is expected to increase to $3.5...