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

Viacom To Target Ads On Roku Streaming Boxes

“With this partnership, we can deliver more relevant messages to Roku consumers for products and services that interest them,”said Kern Schireson, Viacom’s executive vice president of data strategy an...

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...

More than 50% US broadband households subscribe to both pay-TV, OTT video service

New consumer research from Parks Associates shows that 53 percent of US broadband households subscribe to both a pay-TV service and at least one OTT video service. According to the ‘OTT Video & TV...

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...