Investors have become highly skeptical over the past 20 months that Roku can maintain its domestic TVOS market dominance over Amazon and Google, let alone establish the same hegemony over the home gateway operating system abroad that it currently enjoys in North America .
But while Roku’s Nasdaq price has plummeted in a jagged way, Roku CEO Anthony Wood is sticking to the same script. open regions like Europe just like America did.
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Interviewed by equity analyst Ben Swinburne at the Morgan Stanley Technology and Media Conference on Monday, Wood insisted that “the same model that works for us in the US also works for us internationally,” and that Roku is “making good progress” in international markets .
The Roku TVOS, Wood said, is now used in nearly 50% of U.S. broadband homes, while Amazon Fire TV and Google TV/Android TV are only used in a “single-digit” percentage of the market.
“Both companies have growing market share, but they are still small,” noted Wood. “The biggest opportunity for us to continue to grow is to take shares in LG, Samsung and Vizio. Those are the TV companies that are left in terms of material market share other than Roku.
Wood said he doesn’t believe the “TV companies” have the resources and will to “write off the cost” of building a global gateway operating system and advertising company.
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Outside the US, Wood continued to tout the progress Roku has made in Canada and Mexico. In these regions, Roku has passed the point of just working to establish viable bases of active users. It has imported the Roku Channel ad sales juggernaut into these countries and is now assembling its local ad sales teams to begin the all-important task of monetization.
For Roku, the narrative challenge is to convince investors that it can do the same in regions like Europe, a wide-open market for gateway OS right now, despite the fact that Roku has made little progress in infiltrating these regions so far. . The vast majority of Roku’s 70 million active users remain in North America.
Making the challenge more sober: Google leads the way in Europe and other markets with Android TV and its offshoot, Google TV.
Wood admitted that “Google is more widespread around the world,” but that’s only because “Android is a global phone operating system.”
Further, he noted that Android TV actually predated Roku in the US smart TV market before Roku surpassed it.
“As Roku enters a market, we quickly begin to gain market share and we begin to gain market share in that country. We see that dynamic play in all the markets we’ve entered,” added Wood.