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.
Roku faces myriad competitors, but it still dominated the U.S. streaming device market with a 37% share as of early 2018, according to Parks Associates. Amazon ranked second with a 28% share, and Appl...
The Roku Channel is also turning heads. The company's ad-supported channel was named one of the three best ad-based over-the-top services among U.S. broadband households according to Parks Associates,...
Roku (NASDAQ:ROKU) went public on Sep. 28, its stock surging nearly 70% from its IPO price of $14 per share. The stock hit almost $30 the following day, but subsequently pulled back to the low $20s....
“There seemed to be an attitude around the industry that after House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, there was no way Netflix could catch lightning in a bottle again,” says Glenn Hower, a senior...
