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.
Approximately 22% of US broadband households use an antenna to watch over-the-air broadcasts, according to Parks Associates. Households with both antennas and pay TV subscribe to multiple OTT video...
New research from Parks Associates finds that subscriptions, formerly representing just over half of total online video spending in 2012, now account for nearly 86% of all internet spending on TV and...
Netflix has been criticized for not having enough enduring franchises like Marvel and Star Wars. Having those would certainly aid its efforts to expand into merchandise licensing, which is one of Walt...
Disney+ has moved into the top three of OTT services, according to new research from Parks Associates. “While the Disney+ content portfolio may have allowed it to leapfrog stablemate Hulu in 2021 r...
