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.
Despite a respectable amount of content and games for virtual reality headsets – and options like Oculus Go driving down the cost of ownership – virtual reality has yet to tap into much of the U.S. ma...
“There’s only so many consumers out there that are willing to pay full price,” said a research analyst with Parks Associates From the article, "How Netflix is adapting as the streaming boom stalls....
Password sharing cost streaming companies about $9.1 billion last year, according to data from the research firm Parks Associates. From the article "The streaming wars are flooding us with TV".
New research out this week from Parks Associates found that Chromecast makes up just 11% of all streaming players installed in the United States, down from 21% three years ago. Meanwhile, Roku’s U.S....
