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

Could streaming giants start to clamp down on password sharing?

The major concern for cyber security companies like Synamedia is how password sharing can turn into true content piracy ? stealing streaming shows and movies and reselling them for profit. If you k...

The streaming wars are flooding us with TV

Password sharing cost streaming companies about $9.1 billion last year, according to data from the research firm Parks Associates. From the article "The streaming wars are flooding us with TV".

Streaming is heading toward a breaking point with consumers

However, while work on that puzzle continues and multiple companies look for a way to get streaming subscribers to stay in one place, customer churn is still high. Or, as Parks Associates describes it...

Password sharing denies streaming services $9 billion in fees

According to analysis by research firm Parks Associates, password piracy and sharing cost streaming providers like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney Plus $9.1 billion in 2019 alone. Why aren’t these companies...