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

Third of US broadband homes watch UGC 10 days per month

Nearly 35% of US broadband homes watch user-generated video on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion at least 10 days per month, according to Parks Associates. The firm’s new OTT research clai...

Parks: Netflix retains OTT top-spot in the US

“Importantly, all of these services have increased their subscriber base over the past year. The top five OTT services have stayed consistent, primarily through maintaining or growing the massive user...

AT&T kills Plenti loyalty program but touts ongoing Thanks campaign

Parks Associates reported last year that 60% of respondents in a survey valued a rewards program for being a loyal customers, third only to the ability to roll over unused data (66%) and free access t...

Cord-Cutting On The Rise In The US

“Pay TV subscriptions have dropped each year since 2014, falling to 81% of US broadband households in Q3 2016,” said Brett Sappington, senior director of research, Parks Associates. “Several factor...