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

Hulu An Even Bigger Chess Piece For Disney And Comcast After Sky Deal – Analysis

“They have a unique proposition, not just compared with Netflix but also with YouTube TV or Sling,” said Hunter Sappington, an analyst with Parks Associates, in an interview with Deadline. “They have...

What Google's Project Fi Means For Mobile Operators

Research published by analyst firm Parks Associates last month revealed that two thirds of U.S. consumers who are likely to switch carriers in the next year felt access to Wi-Fi as part of their mobil...

They Started With $10,000. Now They're Taking on ESPN

It's no wonder that OTT is on everyone's mind. In 2016, Major League Baseball's streaming service, MLB.TV, was the fourth-most popular streaming service in the U.S., after Net­flix, Hulu, and Amazon P...

Watch, Meet Smartwatch: Fossil And Misfit Think They're A Perfect Match

Harry Wang, director of mobile and health products research at Dallas-based Parks Associates, said the digital fitness tracker is the fastest-growing category in the connected health device market, an...