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.
The rising occurrence of high-profile security hacks and privacy breaches, as well as being personally victimized, are contributing to ever-increasing consumer anxiety about smart home devices and pla...
It's also comparable to the 9% annual churn for Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), which tops all streaming services, and much better than the 50% rate for Hulu, according to research from Parks Associates. Aside...
Research firm Parks Associates recently found that 79% of U.S. broadband households are concerned about data security or privacy issues, for instance. Meanwhile, the soaring use of the Zoom platform h...
A recent survey from Parks Associates finds builders are starting to provide smart home-ready networking infrastructure in new developments as a standard offering. From the article, "Survey Find Ho...
