 |
|
|
|||||
Its easy to forget how big a splash the first Roku box made when it debuted on May 20, 2008. At launch, the device worked only with Netflix, best known at the time as a mail-order Blockbuster rival that was just ramping up its streaming service. The 10,000 movies and shows you could watch skewed toward the random and musty: Back then, Netflixs mail-order DVD service offered 10 times as many titles. But the $100 Netflix Player by Roku took a process that had been geeky at bestgetting internet video onto a TVand made it approachable and affordable. In the unassuming gadget, wrote The New York Timess Saul Hansell, I think you can see the future of video. Hansell was right. And though that original box has grown quaint with time, Roku is still riding the streaming wave. The company ended 2024 with 89.8 million streaming households, an increase of 9.8 million year over year. In the first quarter of 2025, it streamed 35.8 billion hours of video, up 5.1 billion year over yearand more than 10 times what it was doing per quarter when it went public in 2017. Behind the scenes, Roku has constructed a diversified business to keep those figures growing and monetize them in new ways. Yes, it still makes streaming boxes, along with streaming sticks and soundbars. However, it also provides North Americas most popular operating system for smart TVs, which it licenses to other manufacturers and uses on its own Roku-branded televisions. It operates the Roku Channel, the most-watched free ad-supported streaming channel, having recently passed Tubi. Its a powerhouse of streaming ads, giving marketers tools such as Roku Ads Manager and Roku Data Cloud. That Roku found itself in a place to build all this involved an early twist of fate. Founder and CEO Anthony Wood oversaw the first streaming boxs development as a skunkworks project for Netflix. When Netflix decided it didnt want to sell a device of its own, Rokuwhich had made internet radios and digital signage controllers, among other productsinherited it. With the introduction of the Roku Channel Store in November 2009, the box began to evolve from a Netflix player into a comprehensive streaming portal. The Channel Store launched with 10 providers, including Pandora and Flickr; the company doesnt disclose the current number, but its in the thousands, including more than 500 free ones. Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood presents at the companys New York product launch on April 23, 2025. [Photo: Courtesy of Roku] It’s amazing how companies underestimate that, Wood says. They still do. They don’t really understand what it means. For example, sometimes people will be like, Your UI, your home screen, hasn’t changed that much. Like that’s terrible. And I’m like, No, our market share keeps going up! So it’s not terrible. People like that. Anyone who scoffs at Rokus lack of change for changes sake might want to consider how successful its been in a business that many others, including Google and Amazon, have long coveted. When you think about the power of an operating system, in the mobile world you think of Apple and Google being the two dominant platforms, says media and technology analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners. In connected TV, the platform that is far and away the largest is Roku. Hardware is hard Woods early realization that devices were most valuable as a springboard to build a platform did not involve any unique insight. Everyone in consumer electronics knows that hardware is hard and services can drive profits. But Roku has been one of the few consumer electronics companies to make it all workcertainly more consistently so than Sonos and GoPro, both of which have been through more than their share of tribulations in recent years. (Fun fact: All three companies were founded in 2002.) Just as Wood anticipated, Roku became a services company. In the first quarter of 2025, it made $881 million in revenue from its platform business, which spans advertising, subscriptions, and software licensing, with a gross profit of 53%. In devices, it had $140 million in revenue but a $19 million loss, for a margin of minus 14%. Overall, the company reported a loss from operations of $58 million and an adjusted EBITDA of $56 million, compared to a $72 million loss and adjusted EBITDA of $41 million for the first quarter of 2024. If youre watching the Roku Channelor another streaming service thats part of the Roku Audience Networkyou see ads the company has inserted in streams. (Overall, according to data from Pixalate, 38% of connected-TV programmatic ads in the first quarter of 2025 were delivered to Roku viewers, the highest percentage of any platform; Amazons Fire TV was second with 18%.) If youre watching something else, such as Disney+ or Max, Roku can monetize that, too: Its built-in payments service, Roku Pay, lets it handle billing in return for a fee. Rokus use of its platform as a giant marketing opportunity for its streaming partners extends to everything from its home screen and screen saver to the dedicated app-specific buttons on its familiar remote control; in March, it raised eyebrows by testing ads that play even before the home screen loads. As I was finishing this article, the platform was thick with messages promoting discounts associated with Streaming Day on May 20a holiday it invented to celebrate the anniversary of its first box. Anti-Roku sentiment expressed online usually reflects frustration with the quantity of advertising and other promotional elements, though the company recently got blamed for some ads it didnt place. Wood says that customer satisfaction studies help determine changes to the platform, but in some cases tweaks get the go-ahead even if theres a very neutral [reaction] or a slight decrease in satisfaction. Because youve got to remember, the revenue ultimately [results] in more content, more free content, more features, and lower cost. Overall, he adds, Those revenue streams have really worked for usdistributing streaming services, merchandising them, selling them, billing for them, and free content with ads. If Roku hadnt done an intrepid job of navigating a TV hardware ecosystem thats radically changed since it shipped its early devices, it wouldnt have a booming ad business. Back then, few people owned smart TVs; the companys competition consisted of other boxes, most of which were clunkier and costlier than its own. But as streaming took off, most TVs added it as a standard feature. Theoretically, that could have rendered Roku and its add-on boxes redundant. The reality, however, was that the home-brewed software cobbled together by many TV manufacturers was terrible. That opened up an opportunity for Roku, whose interface was already widely praised for its polish and straightforwardness. In 2014, the company introduced Roku TV, a platform designed to be embedded into televisions rather than delivered via a box. It launched on models from Chinas TCL and Hisense, respectively the third- and fifth-largest TV brands at the time. Looking back, Wood says that TV makers were skittish about ceding control of the on-screen experience. When we first started going to TV companies, one of the biggest challenges we had was they all wanted a custom UI, and they didn’t want their UI to look like their competitors, he remembers. In the end, many were convinced to standardize on Roku, which now ships on TVs from 35 brands, including JVC, Walmarts Onn house brand, Philips, and Westinghouse. In some cases, they play up the platforms brand and benefits on their packaging even more than their own. Among the TV manufacturers who still dont offer Roku models are three of the best-known brands: Samsung, LG, and Sony. Wood contends thats worse news for them than for Roku. Samsung still makes their own platform, he says. They just don’t have enough scale and monetization, even as large as they are, to do what we do in terms of features. . . . And so we’re just a better product, and consumers care about that. Then there are the most Roku-centric TVs of all. In 2023, the company introduced its own line of televisions; it went on to sell a million of them in 2024. Are the TV makers who license Rokus software okay with it competing with their products? They’d probably prefer we didn’t, allows Wood, who calls it just another move to build market share. Along with catering to customers who want the purest possible Roku experience, doing so lets the company test new features before rolling them out more widely, he explains. It also helps retailers plug holes in their TV lineups when they cant get all the models theyd like from other brands. Even in an age of smart TVs, Rokus streaming sticks arent done evolving. [Photo: Courtesy of Roku] At the launch event where I spoke with Wood, Roku unveiled its 2025 line of TVs. But it also introduced two new add-on streaming devicesnot boxes but sticks that plug directly into a TVs HDMI port, a diminutive form factor the company has offered since 2012. Its still finding ways to improve them: The new models are slimmer than their predecessors, so they dont block adjacent HDMI ports. They also draw power from the TV, eliminating the need for a cable and charging plug. Given that its now tough to buy a TV that doesnt have streaming features built in, how is it possible that these sticks are still a thing? Even inside Roku, Wood says, many people expected the market for them to trend sharply toward zero. So far, it hasnt: Every year we keep selling themwe sell a lot of streaming sticks. Some customers, he says, use them to upgrade aging smart TVs whose built-in software is no longer getting updates. Others may simply prefer Roku to other streaming interfaces. Rokus continued focus on streaming shows a fair amount of discipline given that its brand is among the most recognizable in smart home technology. (Googles Nest, by contrast, has migrated from thermostats to security systems, speakers, screens, Wi-Fi routers, and other products but lost its early buzz along the way.) Not that Roku hasnt played around the edges: In 2022, I wrote about its foray into cameras and doorbells. Rather than lavishing attention on the project, it started with devices built by Wyze and then provided security and software upgrades, along with integrations with its TV platform. Today, Roku sells millions of products a year based on its Wyze partnership and is still rolling out new models. But the initiative shows no signs of broadening into an all-out effort to conquer every area of household tech. Our primary business is streaming, but its kind of a nice accessory, Wood says. Its a channel, too For much of its history, Roku expanded the utility of its devices by supporting new streaming services as they came along. By 2017, its Channel Store had more than 5,000 of them, from the expected name-brand giants to upstarts represeting an array of niches. That was the year it launched a service of its own, calledperhaps inevitablythe Roku Channel. That move went on to transform how the company made money by letting it sell ads on its own streams. Today, Its a multibillion-dollar business for us, Wood says. Having its own channel also gave Roku the opportunity to simplify streaming even more by taking responsibility for what Steve Jobs would have called the whole widgetthe entire experience from the design of the remote control to the lineup of shows. In some ways, the Roku Channel is at the center of what they’re doing, says LightSheds Greenfield. Focused on free ad-supported programming, the Roku Channel is a sprawling streaming service inside the Roku platform. [Photo: Courtesy of Roku] Calling it a mere channel is a bit of a misnomer, though. Its become a sprawling streaming service unto itself, with on-demand movies and episodes, live channels, and premium for-pay options such as Starz, AMC+, and the service soon to be known once again as HBO Max. The Roku Channel also has a life well beyond Rokus own platform: You can watch it on the web, using iPhone and Android apps, or even on two of Rokus archrivals, Google TV and Amazons Fire TV. Almost eight years into its existence, the Roku Channel has quietly gobbled up a meaningful percentage of the hours humans spend consuming video content. In April, according to Nielsens the Gauge, it accounted for 2.4% of all TV watched by people ages 2 and up (sorry, babies). That might not sound huge, but its 2.4% of all TVbroadcast and cable as well as streamingand is up 71% year over year. And though its below YouTube (12%), Netflix (7.9%), Disneys streaming services (5%), Amazon Prime Video (3.5%), and Paramounts services (2.3%), it beats Tubi (1.9%), HBO Max and Warner Bros. Discoverys other services (1.5%), and Peacock (1.4%). Roku itself says that the Roku Channels streaming hours are up 84% year over year, and that its the platforms No. 2 service among U.S. watchers in terms of engagement. (The company doesnt officially disclose which one is No. 1, but according to one source, its YouTube.) Contentwise, what Roku is streaming on its service bears a certain resemblance to Netflix in its early, pre-House of Cards days, before it shifted decisively to original content. There are vast quantities of recognizable TV shows and movies. Its just that they arent the latest ones, and sometimes theyre decades-old comfort food. However, there are also more Roku Originals than I realized, including movies and series. These made-for-Roku items havent commandeered huge amounts of public attention, but 2022s excellent fantasy biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story and a show Roku picked up after Disney abandoned it, The Spiderwick Chronicles, both won Emmys. And having some exclusives buttresses the platforms story for marketers. As Wood puts it: You go and talk to advertisers, you don’t say, Hey, the Roku Channel has a whole bunch of reruns of Bewitched. (Note: It does116 episodes worth.) Marketers may like seeing Roku invest in original content, but a recent acquisition proves it isnt overly fixated on prestige. On May 1, the company announced it was spending $185 million to acquire Frndly TV, a streaming service whose 50 channels include rerun purveyors such as Lifetime, the Game Show Network, Hallmark Mysteries, andmy favoriteMeTV Toons. Starting at $7 per month, its a logical step up from the free stuff thats propelled the Roku Channels popularity. As a Roku property, it should benefit from the companys ability to put it front and center on the platform. The power of Rokus mass-market consumer footprint is so undeniable that even Apple has seen fit to embrace it. Like Roku, it has a streaming box: Apple TV, whose original version shipped even before Rokus Netflix Player. But in January, the two companies collaborated on an exclusive fan experience for the hit Apple TV+ show Severance. Shortly before the second season premiered, the first one streamed for free on the Roku Channel. Anyone whose appetite was whetted for the new episodes didnt need to buy an Apple TV box to catch them: Apple TV+ has its own Roku app. With Roku already in about half of American homes and its platform running about 40% of TVs and half of streaming devices, it runs the risk of maxing out its ability to scale up further. Wood acknowledges that U.S. growth is slowing, and emphasizes the importance of even more aggressive monetization. For example, the Roku home screen recently added a row with app recommendations the company can market to streaming partners. International expansion, he says, is also criticalalready, the company has a commanding market share in Mexico. Still, 18 years after Wood began introducing Americans to streaming, he sees the potential to reach even more of them. The strategymake it simple, make it cheap, and just keep goingabides. People are still upgrading TVs, and our market share for TVs sold also keeps growing, he says. So I think there’s room.
Category:
E-Commerce
Researchers funded by the U.S. Navy have used gene-editing technology to make house spiders produce red fluorescent silk. This might seem like a quirky scientific novelty, but the breakthrough is a critical step toward modifying spider silk properties and creating new supermaterials for industries ranging from textiles to aerospace. The team at Germanys University of Bayreuth, led by Professor Thomas Scheibel, successfully applied CRISPR-Cas9a molecular tool that acts as genetic scissors to cut and modify DNA sequencesto spiders for the first time. The study, published in the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie, demonstrates how this technology introduces modifications that enhance the extraordinary properties of spider silk, turning it into a next-generation supermaterial. In a press release, professor Thomas Scheibel, chair of biomaterials at the University of Bayreuth and senior author of the study, said, Considering the wide range of possible applications, it is surprising that there have been no studies to date using CRISPR-Cas9 in spiders. His team injected a solution containing CRISPR-Cas9 components into female Parasteatoda tepidariorum, a common house spider species. To facilitate the process, the spiders were anesthetized with carbon dioxide and manually held under a microscope. The solution, which included a gene encoding a red fluorescent protein (called mRFP), was delivered into the eggs within the females abdomens before mating with males so the resulting baby spiders could carry the gene modification. [Image: Edgardo Santiago-Rivera and Thomas Scheibel] What are scientists trying to do? The experiment set two objectives: first, to disable a gene called sine oculis, responsible for the development of all spider eyes, in order to study its function. And then second, to insert the fluorescent protein gene into the MaSp2gene, which produces the silk thread spiders use to move hunt, hike, and chill out. In modified specimens, disabling sine oculis caused total or partial eye loss, confirming its critical role in visual development. According to the study, without this gene spiders fail to form eye structures, though the cornea develops normally. But the breakthrough with far-reaching industrial implications is the silk modification. The injected fluorescent protein gene successfully integrated into the MaSp2 gene, causing fibers produced by the modified spiders to glow red under ultraviolet light. [Image: Edgardo Santiago-Rivera and Thomas Scheibel] According to Scheibel, they have demonstrated, for the first time worldwide, that CRISPR-Cas9 can be used to incorporate a desired sequence into spider silk proteins, thereby enabling the functionalisation of these silk fibres. He says that the ability to apply CRISPR gene-editing to spider silk is very promising for materials science researchfor example, it could be used to further increase the already high tensile strength of spider silk. This accomplishment was no small feat. Spider genomes are complex, and their embryonic developmentmarked by unique cell migration stagescomplicates genetic editing, according to the researchers. In fact, only 7% of egg sacs that were treated with the CRISPR solution contained modified offspring, a low efficiency rate typical for species with large broods (common house spiders carry about 250 spiders per sac). Additionally, the spiders they used are cannibalistic nature, which required them to be reared in isolation (not all spiders are cannibalistic in nature, but many do eat their males after mating and others eat each other). [Image: Edgardo Santiago-Rivera and Thomas Scheibel] The race for super silk It’s a very promising development indeed. Spider silk is one of natures strongest materials. Certain types of spider silk are significantly lighter and tougher than Kevlar. Silk is also far more elastic, which means it can stretch and return to its original shape without losing its strength. To top all this, spider silk production by spiders (or other animals, more on this later) does not involve the industrial processes, high energy consumption, and pollution associated with the manufacturing of synthetic materials like Kevlar. This is a major area of interest for biomimicry and sustainable materials. Until now, modifying spider silks properties required costly, lab-based post-extraction processing, which is difficult to scale. This study shows that altering silk directly within the organism is feasible, paving the way for custom-designed silks with enhanced properties. While spider silk remains unmatched in natural performance, CRISPR-edited silkworms are emerging as scalable alternatives. Silkworms can be farmed en masse (unlike solitary, cannibalistic spiders), and recent advances show their engineered silk reaches 1.3 GPa tensile strength, comparable to high-tensile steel, which is a steel alloyed with chromium, molybdenum, manganese, nickel, silicon, and vanadium. Companies like Kraig Biocraft Laboratories already use CRISPR toproduce spider-silk hybrids in silkworms, targeting industries like textiles and medical sutures. However, spider silk holds unique advantages over those genetically modified silkworms. Its dragline fibers are inherently stronger and 10 times finer. Using the method developed by Scheibels team, potential CRISPR-enhanced spiders are likely to gain more superpowers, like getting closer to Kevlar or gaining better electrical conductivity. Where super silk might be used In medicine, spider silks biocompatibility makes it ideal for dissolvable surgical sutures that reduce scarring and artificial tendons mimicking natural elasticity. Researchers are also developing 3D-printed scaffolds infused with silk proteins to regenerate bone or cartilage, leveraging silks porous structure to support cell growth. For drug delivery, silk microcapsules could release medications at controlled rates, improving treatments for chronic diseases. New applications can integrate silk in sensors for real-time health monitoring in implants or conduct electricity for flexible electronics. The U.S. Navys funding of the research makes sense too, given its interest in lightweight body armor. Spider silk can outperform Kevlar, while its elasticity reduces blunt-force trauma. In aerospace, silk composites could replace carbon fiber, cutting aircraft weight by 40% and improving fuel efficiency. NASA already explores silk-based materials for radiation shielding in space habitats, capitalizing on its strength-to-weight ratio. Companies like AMSilk and Spintex engineer spider silk proteins into biodegradable textiles, reducing reliance on synthetic fabrics derived from fossil fuels. Adidas has prototyped ultralight running shoes with silk midsoles, while Airbus tests silk-based cabin panels to lower aircraft emissions. Spintex claims that its energy-efficient spinning process1,000 times more efficient than plastic productioncould revolutionize sustainable fashion, addressing the industrys 10% global carbon footprint. Right now, Scheibels team is already exploring CRISPR edits to add moisture-responsive shrinking or toxin-detecting color changes to silk. Once they achieve whatever new wundersilks theyor the U.S. Navyhave in mind, they will have to come up with a way to mass-produce them. This evokes images of farms full of millions of genetically modified spiders, which sounds as fun as a rave with 10,000 zombies from The Last of Us. But the spider farms may never happen: As the researchers mention, many spiders are cannibals and the success rate of modification is still very low, so this will be a challenge. That is what makes genetically modified silkworms ideal to make spider-like silks, as they have been farmed for silk production since the neolithic, about 6,000 years ago, when Yangshao culture in China realized that silkworms could be raised to harvest cocoons that then got weaved to create silk fabric. The solution may be taking the successful spider DNA modifications they develop and using other animals to produce them, like silkworms or goats (yes, spider-goats are a thing). I’ll leave you at this point. Good luck in your dreams tonight, my arachnophobic friends.
Category:
E-Commerce
If you’ve always wanted to donate to Wikipedia but needed an extra nudge to do so, a new capsule collection by the German fashion brand Armedangels could be that reason. To mark Wikipedia’s forthcoming 25th anniversary next year, Armedangels designed a 14-piece collection that turns design features from the Wikipedia user interface and experience into brand elements. Its signature bright cobalt blue, called “hyperlink blue,” is a key color, along with white and yellow core colors. One design, featured on a T-shirt and sweatshirt, uses an iconic 1972 image of Earth called “Blue Marble” that was taken during the Apollo 17 mission and is in the public domain. [Photo: Armedangels] A text excerpt from “The Blue Marble” Wikipedia page is below the image, which is one of the most widely reproduced images in the world and “celebrates the freedom of knowledge,” according to the product description. Wikipedia’s serif W logo is featured throughout. The collection is available now via the Armedangels website. The Armedangels x Wikipedia collection includes items that equate knowledge to progress, with shirts promoting freedom, peace, and equality. Ball caps with slogans like “Open Source of Information” and “Yes, I know,” are fan merch for people who love going down multi-tab Wikipedia rabbit holes. The items range in price from about $16 for socks, $48 for hats, $57 for T-shirts, and $114 for sweatshirts. [Photo: Armedangels] The nonprofit Wikimedia Foundationwhich also operates tools like Wikimedia Commons and Wikibookssaw annual revenue of more than $180 million in 2024, more than $170 million of which came from donations (though it says just 2% of Wikipedia readers donate). Some hypebeast apparel might be able to nominally improve that percentage, and it comes as the site itself has become a political lightning rod, facing increasing attacks from some on the right. [Photo: Armedangels] Armedangels says every piece is made from 100% recycled material, and 12% of sales proceeds go to the Wikimedia Foundation. It’s “sustainability meets free knowledge,” as the fashion brand says. “Because when we know better, we do better.” Like the pro-reading, anti-book-ban capsule collection for Penguin Random House by Online Ceramics, Armedangels x Wikipedia lends street-fashion cred to book smartsand it raises money for valuable education resources at a time when anti-intellectualism is on the rise, and our information ecosystem has become especially polluted. Supporting a free online encyclopedia is one way to fight back. For Wikipedia, its volunteers, readers, and fans, the site is an effective line of defense against misinformation and ignorance. Now they have a limited-edition streetwear line that feels the same way.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||