You shall pass... With the trillion dollar tech giants blocking the view, it's easy to miss Roku. The little streaming dongle company controls 43M living rooms with its smart TV tech — and yesterday it unveiled the Roku Streambar. But to get to know Roku, compare it to its top rival, Apple:
- The dongle: Roku's streaming stick starts at $50, adding Netflix, YouTube, Spotify and all the other streaming apps to any TV. Apple's equivalent "stick" (Apple TV) starts near $180.
- Market value: Apple's total stock market value is almost 100x bigger than Roku: $2T vs. $23B.
Who composed the score?... Asks nobody after finishing the movie. Still, Roku's latest device adds what the other streaming devices don't: premium sound. At $129, Streambar is a low-priced way to bring streaming to your living room while shaking the furniture with four 14-inch speakers.
Roku knows what this winter will have... no movie theaters. Picture things in 4 months: a 2nd wave of COVID and everyone stuck inside because of the cold. You won't even be able to escape to the theater to watch the latest Marvel or Star Wars flick (Disney postponed all its movies by about a year). Roku sees this and thinks Americans might love a movie theater experience at home, courtesy of Streambar.