Running Roku OS, obviously
Roku is primarily known for both its streaming devices that are among the best available and Roku OS, with the latter also being licensed to TV brands like Hisense, Hitachi, Philips, TCL, and others in the US, Mexico, and more parts of the world. Now, the company is looking to take the next step and is reportedly looking to manufacture TVs under its own brand name.
A Business Insider report claims that Roku held a focus group this month to present participants “different models, feature sets and names, sizes, price points” of TVs, with the moderator making it clear that the company is looking to manufacture them. Another executive familiar with Roku’s plans added that it has been looking to enter the TV manufacturing business for over a year now. While not mentioned, the company will likely get a third party to make the TVs and then sell them under its own branding.
Roku earns a cut from Netflix and other streaming services whenever a user subscribes to them via their platform. Additionally, it makes money by licensing its smart OS platform to other TV makers. Roku OS was reportedly the largest smart TV OS in the US in 2020 and 2021. It had 60.1 million subscribers in the US alone at the end of 2021, with 8.9 million new additions throughout the year. However, the platform’s growth slowed down in the second half of the year, with the company’s CFO, Steve Louden, blaming this on the global supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that impacted the US TV market. This has further acted as a catalyst for Roku to make its own TVs, as it would then own the “last bit of branding.”
Consumers are increasingly preferring smart TVs to streaming boxes, which makes it important for Roku to have its OS on as many devices as possible. However, the company faces stiff competition from Google on this front as the latter has been aggressively courting manufacturers like Hisense and TCL to launch TVs running Google TV.
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