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.
Consider the latest OTT video study from Parks Associates . In a report released Thursday, Parks found that more than 85% of US millennials in broadband homes now subscribe to least one OTT video serv...
The experimentation with business models can help draw new subs and provide a point of differentiation, added Brett Sappington, senior director of research at Parks Associates . He said three SVoD...
Despite recent gains by Fire TV, Roku maintained its lead in the streaming media player market as of Q1 2018, according to Parks Associates . Roku held 37% of the market, ahead of Amazon, Google and A...
It would also open another front in a competitive streaming platform battle that pits Amazon's Fire TV against Roku Inc. , Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s Android TV and Apple TV (tvOS), as well as smart TV-f...
