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 the short term, Napoli suggested, Trump could see some success thanks to the initial “curiosity factor.” But whether he can keep audiences interested is another matter. “For partisan content, there...
More and more people are watching TV and movies with over-the-top devices. Streaming device ownership spiked from six percent of U.S. broadband households in 2010 to almost 40 percent last year, accor...
Parks Associates, a Dallas-area research outfit, is tracking more than 200 OTT services and there are plenty more beyond those, points out analyst Hunter Sappington. “With so many services it is hard...
Roku faces massive, deep-pocketed competitors — but so far the 700-employee company has more than held its own in the streaming-media device market. In the first quarter of 2017, Roku had 37% share of...
