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: Adoption Rates on the Rise

Parks Associates research finds that 45% of U.S. internet households own a security solution, and 32% subscribe to a security service.   Parks Associates data shows that 26% of home security...

A new vacuum can alert you to incoming text messages. Why?

"The appliance category becoming connected does add a lot of opportunities to provide new information to a consumer," says Elizabeth Parks, the president and chief marketing officer at Parks Associate...

The Transformation of Making, Storing, and Keeping Energy Reliable

“Since the 1980s, energy efficiency has been one of the key drivers of home automation, which is what it was called back then,” said Elizabeth Parks, president and CMO at research group Parks Associat...

Streaming in 2025 Isn’t the Bargain It Used to Be

A recent Parks Associates report found that nearly half of U.S. households subscribe to five or more streaming video services, and 23% subscribe to eight or more. The bottom line? Cutting the cord...