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

Roku is Making TV Speakers, But They Only Work with Roku TVS

The idea behind this is that if your TV sounds better, people will stream more, which is the metric Roku cares most about, Klarke says. Roku likes to say that it's the US's number one streaming conten...

Western European Smart Thermostat Sales To Hit 1 Mln By 2020

Sales of smart thermostats in Western Europe are set to rise from less than 700,000 units in 2016 to more than one million units by 2020, according to a report on smart energy and water products by Pa...

Could a Button for Improved AI on Galaxy S8 Help Samsung Move Past Its Recent Stumble?

Advanced voice control technology is a growing good bet, especially when it comes to consumers on the younger end of the demographic spectrum. Millennials show particular comfort with voice control of...

Roku Plunges: 3 Reasons to Buy, 4 Reasons to Sell

Last August, Parks Associates reported that Roku controlled 37% of the streaming device market in the U.S., while Amazon, Google, and Apple held shares of 24%, 18%, and 15%, respectively. All three of...