OTT boxes are quickly becoming the new standard for the way Americans consume their television content. The popularity of Roku has been no secret, most people know someone who owns, and loves, their Roku player. The popularity and success of Roku is anecdotal no more as Roku recently announced record numbers. In December of 2016 Roku reports that they streamed a billion hours of content to their customers. That number includes both video and audio content.
While a billion of hours a month is impressive, what’s even more impressive is the 9 billion hours of content streamed throughout all of 2016. If December is to act as a barometer, 2017 is set up to be Roku’s most successful year yet.
In 2016, Roku pulled in close to $400 million in revenue, a $100 million increase over 2015. This massive increase in revenue and hours streamed is partly due to there being significantly more people using Roku products on a regular basis. Roku reported 3.4 million additional customers in 2016 for a total of 13.4 million active Roku accounts. These numbers paint a pretty picture for Roku as they show growth across the board. The majority of this growth was likely driven by Roku’s release of the Roku Stick and their new line of Roku set-top boxes.
Roku’s success is perhaps best illustrated through the Nielsen Data from December 2016, where Roku accounted for 48% of the total active streaming players in the United States.
Roku CEO Anthony Wood remarked in a recent release that “The investments we are making in our platform to enable advertisers and content publishers to reach our rapidly growing audience are paying off, and we are still in the early stages of our capabilities.”
Many of those investments reflect a renewed focus on building their content library to better suit their customers viewing habits. Roku now offers over 4,500 streaming channels that, all told, make up a library of about 450,000 movies and television shows.
Make no doubt about it, Roku’s goal is to become the most popular streaming TV operating system in the United States. For now, Roku controls 48% of streaming users and 13% of the smart TV market (after only two years in the industry). Roku is touting record-breaking numbers from 2016, which can only make us wonder what Roku will accomplish in 2017. For now, buying a Roku seems like a smart decision.
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