Variety

The OTT platforms’ leverage is real. Both say they have more than 40 million active accounts (and growing). “Amazon and Roku are beginning to play hardball with a lot of these services,” says Parks Associates analyst Kristen Hanich. “They’re a lot more powerful than they were three years ago.”

Indeed, the channel-aggregation biz has become lucrative for Roku and Amazon. According to Amazon, almost 5 million HBO subscribers access the service through Prime Video Channels. Ove ...read more

Beyond rev-share terms for HBO Max, holdouts like Roku and Amazon — which together had 69% market share of U.S. OTT households in early 2019, Parks Associates estimated — are objecting to WarnerMedia’s push to have current HBO customers switch to HBO Max apps. That would mean current HBO customers who get the service through the Roku Channel or Prime Video Channels will be forced to move to the HBO Max app to get the expanded bucket of content — and thus leave the Roku and Amazo ...read more

There’s no doubt people will check out Quibi, particularly with stay-at-home directives set to run through the end of April. “America right now is a captive audience starved for something to do,” says Parks Associates analyst Steve Nason.

From the article "Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Quibi Is Ready to Launch, but Will Viewers Bite?" by Todd Spangler.

There were 221 active over-the-top (OTT) services in the US in 2018, up from 199 in 2017, per Parks Associates. And this figure is slated to increase as Disney, WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal, launch their own services in 2019 and 2020. Getting in the streaming race earlier could help Apple more quickly cultivate a following among consumers that may otherwise become users of other streaming services that launch sooner. In a March 2019 research note, Goldman Sachs predicted that Apple ...read more

Cheaper prices have helped competitors like Roku and Amazon to easily outsell Apple in the TV space. Market research company Parks Associates reported earlier this year that Roku’s market share for streaming devices was 37%, with Amazon coming in second at 28%. Apple ranked third with just around 15%.

From the article "Apple Looked at Launching Low-Cost TV Dongle (Report)" by Janko Roettgers.

Parks Associates, a Dallas-area research outfit, is tracking more than 200 OTT services and there are plenty more beyond those, points out analyst Hunter Sappington. “With so many services it is hard for some to gain an audience,” he says. “Even niche services can get lost.”

From the articel "Streaming Wars Accelerate: What’s Working and Why" by Diane Garrett.

Roku has kept its eye on simplicity ever since that first player while also making products that often are far more affordable than those of its competition. “People underappreciate how important price is,” Wood says. “At the end of the day, $10 at retail makes a huge difference.” Parks Associates senior research director Brett Sappington agrees that low prices were key to the company’s success. “That really helped Roku,” he says.

From the article "How Roku Morphed From a Qu ...read more

The scrappy independent streaming-platform developer has been able to beat Goliaths in the tech biz. Roku had 37% share of all streaming devices owned by U.S. broadband households in the first quarter of 2017, according to research firm Parks Associates. That put it as the No. 1 brand in the product segment, ahead of Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick (24%), Google’s Chromecast (18%) and Apple TV (15%).

From the article "Roku Stock Retreats After Device Maker’s Roaring IPO" by ...read more