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

How Do Consumers Research Smart Home Gear?

Parks Associates research reveals manufacturer websites are No. 1 source for researching smart home equipment. Integrator websites are No. 2. Those are the results from new smart home research by P...

Report: Smart Home Devices Had Biggest Impact on Security Market in 2016

As for why dealers change their offerings, there are many possibilities. According to the Parks and SSI study, competitive forces are key. It could also be driven by the consumer, as more homeowners a...

Parks Associates: Headphones Likely to Experience Sales Spike Due to Coronavirus

A recent study by Parks Associates, a technology-based marketing and research company, finds that 44% of US broadband households own speakers, 37% own headphones bought separately from a phone or musi...

Research Finds Over Half of U.S. Citizens Open to Sharing Data to Help Fight Coronavirus

More than half (52%) of broadband households in the United States express a willingness to share smartphone data to assist in COVID-19 contact tracing, while another 20% could be convinced provided pr...