Another reason I love to blog: I keep up with "things" I would otherwise read and forget.
Exhibit A: streaming options.
At that post, I spoke about Hulu, Amazon, Disney, Apple, Roku, and others.
Without question, my favorite is Hulu, majority owned by Disney.
The company that will evolve the most over the next two years if it wants to stay not only competitive but also relevant: Roku.
Like Netflix, Roku will move from hardware to software.
But today's news, and this is really huge: Roku remote will now have an Apple button. Wow.
On my Amazon TV Fire stick remote there are four buttons: Prime Video (of course); Netflix; Disney+; and, hulu. It looks like there is room for two more buttons. Something tells me Amazon won't put an Apple button on the remote. LOL.
Apple is apparently hungry for real estate on your Roku remote. Shares of Roku moved higher on Wednesday after screenshots showed the remote for the high-end Roku Ultra streaming device replacing a Sling TV button with one for the Apple TV+ service.
The market's initial reaction -- up 4.3% on Wednesday -- may seem like an overreaction. We're talking about a roughly $250 million bump in market cap just because one of the four branded buttons on the bottom of a remote changed. We don't know what Apple TV+ is paying for the one-push access, but you can be sure that it's not much if anything more than what Sling was sending Roku's way.
The market excitement here with the move of an Apple TV+ button on the updated remote is more about validation of Roku by what was once seen as one of its three main competitors. Roku has arrived. The stock may have given back all of Wednesday's gains the following day, but it's still one more reason why you don't want to bet against Roku.
If you're like me -- with a collection of different Roku remotes -- you'll be quick to notice that buttons change pretty often. Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) always commands the prime position of the first of four service-branded spots. Netflix probably doesn't have to pay for that visibility, and Roku in the past has said that it generates negligible marketing revenue from Netflix.
Roku and Netflix go way back. Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood was even working at Netflix on a streaming device before Netflix decided it didn't want to get into the hardware/platform space. The Netflix Player was nixed, and the team led by Wood was spun off. It's how Roku was born.
Much more at the link.
As seen above, the linked article begins:
Apple is apparently hungry for real estate on your Roku remote.
I like to think that Roku was hungry for "the next big thing": Apple TV+.
I don't care for Apple TV+. I subscribe but I don't watch. It's still free for subscribers who pay around $4.95 per month for the subscription but get a rebate of about $4.50 each month. That rebate is going to go away soon (if it hasn't already gone away).
But it doesn't matter than I don't care for Apple TV+. A lot of folks do. While at T-Mobile (Sprint) yesterday, I spoke with a woman much younger than I and she said she enjoyed Apple TV+ mostly because of all the original content.
The fact that Apple has a button on the Roku remote speaks volumes about both companies.
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