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

The Smart Money: 7 Smart Home and Security Trends from CES

Parks Associates hosted the 18th annual CONNECTIONS Summit at CES, bringing industry leaders from the connected home together to share insights and updates on the state of the smart home and security...

Hub: Amazon Eyes Winning Formula With Ad-Supported Prime Video

A separate study from Parks Associates found that Prime Video still remains the No. 1 SVOD service in the United States, based on subscriber tallies. Prime is estimated to have 160 million members in...

Walmart’s bid for Vizio would make it a different kind of company

“That’s increasingly where the money is,” said Jennifer Kent, vice president of research at Parks Associates. She said these days, a TV’s worth is tied to its streaming platform. Walmart’s private...

Matter Standard Revolutionizes Smart Home Interoperability: Challenges and Opportunities

According to Parks Associates' latest security dealer survey, familiarity with the Matter standard among dealers has increased to 24% in 2023, up from 16% in 2022. However, there's still a signifi...