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

Can Google's Android TV Take on an Updated Apple TV?

Perhaps aware of Chromecast's limitations, Google unveiled Google TV's successor, Android TV, at its I/O conference last year. Compared to Google TV, Android TV is far less complex, with a standard in...

PCCW Media launches Viu OTT video service

Global research group TDG* estimated that global advertising revenue from OTT TV is expected to grow nearly four-fold between 2015 and 2020. By 2020, OTT TV ad revenue will be approximately US$40 bill...

Comcast Pursues Bigger Piece Of Smart Home Market

“First and foremost, we have over the past year and a half focused heavily on disrupting the home security market,” Dan Herscovici, senior vice president and general manager of Xfinity Home, said in a...

SVOD MARKET: Survival of the Fittest

Perhaps the bigger surprise is that more haven’t exited the market — yet. “We’re finding that there are many services that are … getting enough subscribers just to be able to be sustainable,” Brett Sa...