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

Why a Disney Spinoff of ESPN Would Be a Whiff | Analysis

According to first-quarter 2022 Parks Associates consumer research, 52% of U.S. internet households have at least one Disneystreaming service in their home. Within that, “ESPN+ is the most popular and...

Sling TV: How Many Subscribers Does It Have?

Parks Associates thinks so. The research group this week issued a study showing that Sling has surpassed the one million subscriber mark, becoming the nation's sixth leading subscription streaming ser...

NAB Puts The Future Focus On OTT In Vegas

In other OTT highlights Parks Associates will cover their latest research in “Adoption, Churn, and the Risky Lives of OTT Video Services;” while panel “Mobile Video’s Explosion: Personalized TV Has Ar...

Smart Home Goal: No Doorbell Left Behind

In a second-quarter 2016 survey of on-line households, research company Parks Associates found that 50 percent of smart-doorbell owners use the devices to see who's at the door when they're not home,...