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.
Yet the so-called smart kitchen remains a tough sell. With the kitchen often a hub for families and friends, habits there can be hard to change. And many people see the kitchen and mealtimes as a have...
The early support for Thread may even hint at where Eero is going next. Tom Kerber, an analyst for Parks Associates, notes that one of the main features of Thread is that it’s decentralized. Instead o...
According to analysis by research firm Parks Associates, password piracy and sharing cost streaming providers like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney Plus $9.1 billion in 2019 alone. Why aren’t these companies...
The effect on the companies’ bottom lines remains unclear, but a study by Parks Associates, a research group, found that sharing cost the streaming video industry $500 million in 2015. One reason t...
