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

Amazon's New Netflix Competitor Is A Bad Deal For Most People

This move brings Amazon's video service into more direct competitor with services like Netflix and Hulu. But a little simple math shows that it actually isn't a great deal unless you plan on cancel...

Merger For New Media Era Or A Bad Remake?

Pay-TV operators are seeing a "slow erosion of the core business," analyst Brett Sappington at Parks Associates said. "After years of attempts to be more than just a 'dumb pipe,' pay-TV operators h...

Has The Smart Home Found A New Voice?

"Over 70% of voice-recognition users are satisfied with the experience of using this solution on their smartphones, which is driving experimentation with this functionality on other platforms, includi...

Can an AI burglar alarm predict break-ins before they happen?

Despite all of the talk surrounding smart, connected homes and the Internet of Things, according to analysts and research firms, the only area where the technology is really gaining traction with cons...