Lot of friends have asked me this, I will try to summarize what I think. 1. Cable will die in few years and all tvs will be smart tv so that’s the future. Roku doesn’t compete with big companies with there own os like Sony/Samsung but there are lot of tv companies which are running on roku OS, which gives roku lot of insights and stay ahead in ad business. Personally I think that’s the major product of roku since roku stick and others are mostly in loss but end goal is to gain more accounts so that we can sell ads. 2. Roku stick though they loose few dollars on each stick theh make much more money on each stick via selling ads 3. Roku tv, though this is new product so nobody knows but if tv quality is good then they can capture low end market with tcl firetv and google tv being there 4. Smart home. Not sure how it will be after few years but end goal is to get everybody ok roku ecosystem so that they can use tv to control everything which is amazing. Think about able to get alerts on tv or doorbell video on tv Being on visa I am not that attached so if I feel like they are not able to perform then I will jump the ship, but like most of the growth companies initially losses are fine as long as we are adding customers since customers are onboarded it’s hard for them to move out. Everybody is welcome to give there input both -ve and +ve 🤞
Roku's moat is owning full stack the hardware and OS. Which allows them to have cheaper devices than FireStick, etc.
I'll buy Roku at 20 to 25 a share in this economy.
So you will buy the company for amount of cash in hand? Roku has 2B in cash. Good luck
Moat cannot be 4 different things. Moat should be 1 thing that no other company can overcome. Some of your points are where other companies have moats and Roku is trying to overcome.
IMO purpose built operating system is the moat, roku also has early mover advantage. Other operating systems were not built for streaming, rather repurposed phone operating systems
I think Roku is really targeting the aging population - maybe the upper end of millennials that aren’t tech savvy, and older generations that are most familiar with using a remote to control tv rather than using desktop/mobile UI. The majority of us on blind probably prefer desktop/mobile, but I think for now we’re not the majority.
Do they even have a lead to need a moat for?
Yes we do. In US , Canada and Mexico
All Roku does is what a simple Fire stick or Chromecast can do for you and honestly, I hate my Roku TV interface, next to unusable. Run my Roku TV on Chromecast mostly
This was such a bad take
Roku has the lead in tv os market share, I think it's easier to use than the alternatives such as fire chrome. However unlike apple eco, currently switching is easy. We are focusing on streaming but content is an issue
Who wins the TV OS is the final winner. Android TV (including Google TV), Fire OS, and Roku OS. 1-2 of them will be there in next few years.
Android TV OS will be free, what will Roku do to make money ? Already, many TV models that were Roku are now Android TV and it's only going to be more of this. Having used both Roku and Android TV, I can say Android is any day better UX
The future of streaming is content, whoever have the most content and ip will win That's why I am long disney, and that's why Netflix is creating a bunch of content My glong term guess is that Big tv does not want rely on Roku, and will try to do their own streaming
Valuation is everything. Buying a company at its overvalued prices is not a sound strategy
Have you hear of weird ai movie