Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

Roku IPO stands a fighting chance in a market hostile to tech offerings

Roku lost $24.2 million in the first six months of 2017 and has accumulated $244 million in losses during its history. Giant rivals can spend millions on moonshots that end up as failures, and the world may never know the exact financial toll of these endeavors. Roku, as a company going public, has no such margin of error.

But here’s what Roku has going for it. CEO Anthony Wood saw a few years ago that the market for streaming-TV devices like the Apple TV was limited, so he started to look for other ways to make money off the transition from traditional TV to over-the-top TV.

Several metrics back him up. Roku’s prospectus says players using its OS accounted for 48 percent of usage on TV-connected devices in late 2016. This year, according to Parks Associates, Roku rose to 37 percent of U.S. homes using broadband, up from 33 percent a year ago. And last month, Roku held a 39 percent share of U.S. connected TV users, rising above its deeper-pocketed rivals.

From the article "Roku IPO stands a fighting chance in a market hostile to tech offerings" by Kevin Kelleher.

Previously In The News

Google's Next Chromecast Could Look More Like a Roku Box

Things have changed. Parks Associates analysis in 2014 found that Chromecast had replaced Apple TV in second place behind Roku. Its market share was 20%. In 2019, though, Parks Associates found that o...

YouTube TV Goes Live in Google’s Biggest Swipe at Comcast Yet

The name YouTube alone carries weight as a signifier of people’s viewing habits migrating online. And for networks taking part in YouTube TV’s launch, that could make coming aboard the service seem li...

'Game of Thrones' is gone, and so are some HBO subscribers

“I think churn is a big challenge for an industry that was essentially designed to allow it, where viewers can switch easily between services and there’s very little barriers to entry,” said Brett Sap...

Is Roku Ready to Enter the Smart-Speaker Market?

New data from research firm Parks Associates shows Roku still commands an industry leading 37% of the streaming-device market. Meanwhile, Amazon.com has padded its lead over a fading Google, with 28%...