Providing Market Intelligence for 40 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

Apple (AAPL) and Hollywood Clash Over Pricing of 4K Content

Apple TV was launched in Jan 2007. It is a digital media player and HDMI compliant set top device that needs to be connected to TV to work. Apple TV also gives access to Apple's iTunes content as well...

Managing for the Optimized Content Bundle

According to Parks Associates, over a quarter of millennials subscribe to three or more over-the-top video services, and more than half use at least two. However, a separate U.S. survey from Vanson Bo...

Operators Should Embrace SVOD to Attract Next Generation

Parks Associates senior director of research Brett Sappington noted that most users of SVOD services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu are younger (aged 25-34) and have been in their homes less than 12 mo...

Most Broadband Homes Have Pay TV and OTT Subscriptions

More than half of all U.S. homes with broadband subscribe to both a pay TV service and at least one over-the-top video service, according to a new study by Parks Associates. In its OTT Video & TV E...