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

What Google's Project Fi Means For Mobile Operators

Research published by analyst firm Parks Associates last month revealed that two thirds of U.S. consumers who are likely to switch carriers in the next year felt access to Wi-Fi as part of their mobil...

Most U.S. Wearable Owners Use Their Gadgets Daily: Study

The vast majority of fitness tracker and smartwatch owners in the United States use their wearables on a daily basis, according to the latest study from Parks Associates. Approximately 68-percent of f...

AT&T-Time Warner Mega-Deal: Merger For New Media Era Or A Bad Remake?

Pay-TV operators are seeing a “slow erosion of the core business,” analyst at Parks Associates said. “After years of attempts to be more than just a ‘dumb pipe,’ pay-TV operators have come to reali...

Everything You Need to Know About the First Super Mario iPhone Game

"A new Mario game is likely to be popular not only among the kid/teen crowd but also among the older Millennial generation who grew up with the famous game," Jennifer Kent, director of market research...