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

Do you share your TV logins with friends and family? Cable operators are coming after you

About one-third of internet users stream cable TV without paying for it by using credentials of someone they don't live with, according to Parks Associates. The TV industry's losses from password shar...

Should AT&T listen to activist investor or stay the course?

HBO Max has become the bellwether that investors are watching to see whether AT&T can execute its entertainment vision. “Out of all their financials, it’s just a small part of AT&T,” said Brett Sap...

Apriva and CardSmith Bring Mobile Payment to Campus Cards

The leading provider of Cloud-Based campus card payment solutions, CardSmith, and Apriva, the leading provider of end-to-end wireless transactions and secure information solutions, announced that they...

The Apple TV is lagging behind its biggest rivals

When it comes to streaming set-top boxes, the Apple TV may get most of the attention, but it's not the device used by most in the US for streaming video. According to a new study by the research fi...