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

The Streaming Era Has Finally Arrived. Everything Is About to Change.

Streaming services, of course, have been challenging the Hollywood status quo for years. Netflix began streaming movies and television shows in 2007 and has grown into a giant, spending $12 billion on...

Walmart seeks to unload Vudu: report

Brett Sappington, senior research director and principal analyst at Parks Associates, added that the transactional market for video, Vudu’s core business, has begun eroding as movie studios no longer...

Too Much TV? Enter HBO Max, the Latest Streaming Wannabe

“People are going to look at the price point first,” said Steve Nason, research director at Parks Associates. HBO Max costs $15, same as the HBO Now streaming service it's supposed to replace, with di...

Apple’s HomePod Has Arrived. Don’t Rush to Buy It.

Apple also provided statistics on smart speaker usage from the research firm Parks Associates. That report also found that playing music and getting the weather were the top uses of smart speakers, wh...