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.
Harry Wang of Parks Associates said the idea of sleep wearables was a “tall order,” but the industry has a huge growth potential. The sleep summit, which included discussions on data-driven opportuni...
The irony is that YouTube TV may well get the growth it’s seeking sooner than anybody expects. Late last year a Parks Associates survey determined that the nascent YouTube Red was consumers’ seventh-f...
According to U.S. market research published by Parks Associates last summer, Amazon media player products narrowly out-shipped Apple TV (for a 22 vs 20 percent share of the market) in 2015, but that a...
PRESS RELEASE: New consumer research from Parks Associates reveals 29% of U.S. broadband households get most of their news from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. According to 360 View:...
