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.
When it comes to predicting when the smart home will become a mainstream phenomenon, we’ve repeatedly missed the mark. Some of us have enjoyed the benefits—and dealt with the few headaches—of living i...
Approximately 12 percent of broadband households in Canada have a smart home device such as a smart thermostat, smart door look, or video doorbell, compared to 26 percent in the US, according to data...
US broadband households watch an average of 3.8 hours of internet video on TV screens each week, accounting for 20 percent of all video viewed on this device, according to research by Parks Associates...
Several recent studies have shown that security and privacy are top of mind for consumers considering Internet of Things devices for their homes. Parks Associates back in October noted around 40 pe...
