Understand any stock in simple English
Enter a ticker to learn what the company does and how it makes money.
Roku makes streaming players and smart TVs, and runs the software platform that helps people watch streaming services on their TVs.
Roku is a streaming company with two main sides. On one side, it sells physical devices — small streaming players that plug into a TV's HDMI port, plus smart TVs made with partners that carry the Roku system built in. On the other side, it runs the software that powers those screens: the home screen, the app store, and the search that helps you find something to watch. People use Roku to turn an ordinary television into a streaming machine, and once they're set up, they rarely think about the box again.
Here is the key to the business: Roku makes very little money on the hardware itself. The players are often sold close to cost, because the real prize is getting the device into your living room and keeping you inside Roku's software. The company then earns money in two ways. It takes a cut from subscriptions and transactions that happen through its platform — when you sign up for a streaming service or rent a movie via Roku, it gets a slice. And it sells advertising, both in the free channels it runs and in the video ads it places across its platform. That platform side is where the profit lives, which is why Roku sometimes gives away cheap hardware to win the screen. The competition is fierce. Amazon, Google, and Apple all sell streaming devices of their own, and smart TV makers often build in their own software. Roku's answer is scale and neutrality: it doesn't own a major Hollywood studio, so it can carry everyone's apps without playing favorites, and its system is licensed to many TV brands. Its Roku Channel — free, ad-supported movies and shows — has become a growing piece of the ad business, giving Roku its own content to sell against rather than just taking a cut from others. In recent years the company has pushed hard into advertising and tightened costs, and it has swung between profits and losses as the ad market shifts. A useful thing to know: Roku counts "streaming households" rather than viewers, and it has passed roughly 80 million of them. That number is the engine — the more homes on the platform, the more valuable its ads and its cut of subscriptions become. The risk is that hardware margins are thin, ad spending is cyclical, and the big platform owners can squeeze it. Roku's bet is that being the Switzerland of streaming — the neutral referee on the TV screen — is worth more than owning the content itself.
Saved answer · last researched 22 Oct 2026
see a list of the most recent 300 searches below: