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 Fastest Growing Video Advertising Platform Is Now CTV

As media conglomerates such as Disney DIS -3.3% and Comcast place a greater content priority on streaming it has promoted consumers canceling their cable subscription. A study from Parks Associates sa...

Streaming companies to see $12.5B in lost revenue by 2024 due to piracy, password sharing: report

The analysis, compiled “360 Deep Dive: Account Sharing and Digital Piracy” by Park Associates, a research and consulting company that specializes in technology, found the amount of revenue lost will i...

Finally: Every Baseball Team’s Sports Network Is Available On At Least One Streaming Service

As YouTube TV’s recent rate hike shows, these services themselves are not immune to rising programming costs. And the same traits that make streaming much less customer-hostile than cable or satellite...

What’s in Your Wallet: Should You Get the Apple Credit Card?—Data Sheet

The war for the couch potato. The latest survey of Internet video boxes found Roku in command, with 39% of the market, and Amazon in second, with 30%. That left Apple and Google fighting over a shrink...