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 Shares Soar in Streaming-Device Maker’s IPO Debut

Roku faces massive, deep-pocketed competitors — but so far the 700-employee company has more than held its own in the streaming-media device market. In the first quarter of 2017, Roku had 37% share of...

Hulu Adds (Mostly) Ad-Free Subscription Service

Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins chalked up the exceptions to rights held by studios on select series. “They have other commitments that they couldn’t free them up for a complete commercial-free offering,” he sa...

5 Reasons Why a New Apple TV Will Launch This Fall (AAPL)

Apple slashed the Apple TV price to $69 in an attempt to retain market share, but the ancient Apple TV hardware was hardly competitive. Parks Associates released a report showing that in 2014, Appl...

22 percent of smartwatch owners plan to use it for home control, automation

Parks Associates analysts say that mobile devices are becoming the de facto controllers for home automation, with apps as the critical interface between the user and the home. For example, nearly 50%...