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.
Luring and keeping customers is becoming harder as the online streaming market gets more crowded and subscribers, freed from cable television's contract model, can cancel service with a click of the m...
That streaming service is one way AT&T wants to ensure that younger consumers will still flow its way. A study by research firm Parks Associates found that nearly a quarter of millennial households ju...
The smart home market is young, but it's growing rapidly as IoT makes its way into virtually every product that can benefit from some level of connectivity. Smart home device ownership in the United S...
According to Parks & Associates, that percentage has nearly doubled since 2013, reaching 15% of homes in 2016. “Pay-TV subscriptions have dropped each year since 2014, falling to 81% of U.S. broadb...
