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

How IoT Technology Is Transforming Africa

According to research by Parks Associates, as much as 70% of security dealers currently install or plan to install some type of interactive smart home devices or systems. This technology also assis...

TV Producers May Start Making You Wait For New Shows Online

The changes are especially noticeable at Hulu, which is owned by parents of the very television networks -- Fox, ABC and NBC -- threatened by changes in the way we watch TV. Hulu has set itself apart...

Apple iPhone Still Ahead, Top Rival Not Far Away

The latest numbers announced by Parks Associates shows that Apple is still leading the smartphone market but the lead is not as big as we thought it will be with Samsung, their biggest rival tagging c...

Smart Home Goal: No Doorbell Left Behind

In a second-quarter 2016 survey of on-line households, research company Parks Associates found that 50 percent of smart-doorbell owners use the devices to see who's at the door when they're not home,...