Roku lost $24.2 million in the first six months of 2017 and has accumulated $244 million in losses during its history. Giant rivals can spend millions on moonshots that end up as failures, and the world may never know the exact financial toll of these endeavors. Roku, as a company going public, has no such margin of error.
But here’s what Roku has going for it. CEO Anthony Wood saw a few years ago that the market for streaming-TV devices like the Apple TV was limited, so he started to look for other ways to make money off the transition from traditional TV to over-the-top TV.
Several metrics back him up. Roku’s prospectus says players using its OS accounted for 48 percent of usage on TV-connected devices in late 2016. This year, according to Parks Associates, Roku rose to 37 percent of U.S. homes using broadband, up from 33 percent a year ago. And last month, Roku held a 39 percent share of U.S. connected TV users, rising above its deeper-pocketed rivals.
From the article "Roku IPO stands a fighting chance in a market hostile to tech offerings" by Kevin Kelleher.
With more of us now using streaming video services during the COVID-19 pandemic—about three-quarters of all U.S. households subscribe to at least one streaming service, according to research from Park...
Almost unheard of as recently as five years ago, smart speakers are on their way to becoming as ubiquitous as the microwave. As of early 2019, a third of U.S. homes with high-speed internet access had...
Automated smart home systems are a growing trend among mainstream consumers; in fact, according to Parks Associates, 48 percent of U.S. broadband households intend to buy at least one smart home devic...
According to a Parks Associates report, Roku was the leading video streaming device in the U.S. followed by Chromecast and Apple TV in 2014. "The research finds Roku is still the leading brand with...
