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.
In a 2023 SmartRent and Parks Associates survey, 79% of apartment residents said they wanted seamless connectivity, and 48% said they’d pay $79.99 monthly for 1 gigabit WiFi service. From the Smart...
“Consumers are increasingly willing to pay for video features and coming to expect always-on monitoring. For example, video doorbells are now the most common smart home devices, with 22% of households...
High operational costs, market saturation, and the constant need for fresh and original content strategies make it difficult for new entrants to carve out a niche or gain a foothold. Parks Associates...
According to research conducted by Parks Associates and SymphonyAI, almost 70% of content executives report that they evaluate data for each distribution service separately. From the article, "AI:...
