Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Roku IPO stands a fighting chance in a market hostile to tech offerings

Roku lost $24.2 million in the first six months of 2017 and has accumulated $244 million in losses during its history. Giant rivals can spend millions on moonshots that end up as failures, and the world may never know the exact financial toll of these endeavors. Roku, as a company going public, has no such margin of error.

But here’s what Roku has going for it. CEO Anthony Wood saw a few years ago that the market for streaming-TV devices like the Apple TV was limited, so he started to look for other ways to make money off the transition from traditional TV to over-the-top TV.

Several metrics back him up. Roku’s prospectus says players using its OS accounted for 48 percent of usage on TV-connected devices in late 2016. This year, according to Parks Associates, Roku rose to 37 percent of U.S. homes using broadband, up from 33 percent a year ago. And last month, Roku held a 39 percent share of U.S. connected TV users, rising above its deeper-pocketed rivals.

From the article "Roku IPO stands a fighting chance in a market hostile to tech offerings" by Kevin Kelleher.

Previously In The News

Smart Light Bulb Owners Turn To Amazon Echo, Google Home

Google Home and most recently Amazon’s Alexa can tell whose voice is talking to it so it can respond to the right person, making the voice assistants even more personally tuned. Around 11% or so of...

OTT Churn Rates Pass 50%

TV customers have a high rate of starting and stopping many new OTT services. Parks Associates says that with the exception of Netflix and Amazon Prime, OTT services experience churn rates exceedin...

22% Plan To Get A Smart Speaker This Year

New research from Parks Associates found that more than one in five consumers plan to purchase a voice-controlled smart speaker with a personal assistant in 2017. Interest in the category is growin...

Santa More Likely To Bring Smart Speakers Over Smartwatches

More than one in five (22%) of U.S. broadband households plan to purchase a voice-controlled smart speaker this year, according to Parks Associates. From the article "Santa More Likely To Bring Sma...