Roku Developer Program

[vaxace]

Hello Roku.

I am working on a proposal for the development of a new Roku channel and am hoping that someone at Roku can give me an estimate of how may Roku boxes are out there now.

Thanks 🙂

D.

[KadooKDB]

Actually we would be very interested in this as well.

We are about to work on offering to our users a channel, but really have no idea of how many units in the US, Canada and worldwide there are out there?

We are planning on sending a mailing out to our users to ask them, but with 2M users that's a task we don't undertake lightly. So if we could get some idea of the market penetration and numbers that would be very useful for us to see if we need to move this project up the list.

Thanks

[kbenson]

According to an interview with the CEO of Roku, it's getting close to 1 million units. I imagine after all the press from Boxee, GoogleTV and AppleTV comparisons it will be quite a bit higher after the holiday season.

http://newteevee.com/2010/09/22/video-12-percent-of-rokus-customers-cut-the-cord/

[vaxace]

KBenson,

Thanks for the info, and the link :D.

D.

[kc8pql]

"KadooKDB" wrote:
.
We are about to work on offering to our users a channel, but really have no idea of how many units in the US, Canada and worldwide there are out there?

Note that so far, the boxes are only sold in the US.

[KadooKDB]

So about one million boxes, and all in the US (or supposedly in the US).

What is the usage of the various channels? What sort of bandwidth is being used up by the various channels?

I know some of this is info that is specific to whoever is a channel, but there needs to be a way for us to size the market. We need to know if our 1M US users would be interested in buying a Roku box if we supported a channel for their content etc...

We need to know if we stream HD to that box, about what size of an issue is it if we end up with 100K users streaming to a Roku box versus their web browser.

Anyway as much market data as possible would be great, and let us know if we want to tackle this now, or later.

It would also be interesting to know what/how Roku is marketing or helping to market channels to the general public. Plus if we are selling Roku boxes on our site along side the ability for our users to stream to the box, what's in it for us? 🙂

Thanks, we are in the final stages of deciding the direction to head for the next three months and we are interested but realized we don't have enough data.

Kurt

[NathanWhitehead]

KadooKDB - I sent you a PM with my stats to help you get an idea of the numbers involved. One thing I forgot to mention - all those numbers are just a snapshot, they are going up rapidly every day!

[kbenson]

"KadooKDB" wrote:
So about one million boxes, and all in the US (or supposedly in the US).

What is the usage of the various channels? What sort of bandwidth is being used up by the various channels?

That's entirely specific to each channel, and I'm not sure how it really pertains to what you are looking for. Netflix probably streams over an exabyte a month all through Roku alone. Some channels don't stream at all. You can see install counts for various channels in the channel store through the Roku.

I know some of this is info that is specific to whoever is a channel, but there needs to be a way for us to size the market. We need to know if our 1M US users would be interested in buying a Roku box if we supported a channel for their content etc...

Maybe another way to look at it is that you can offer a cheap way to integrate to your existing users for $60 (current low-end cost), and open your service up to almost a million new users.

We need to know if we stream HD to that box, about what size of an issue is it if we end up with 100K users streaming to a Roku box versus their web browser.

I would imagine you wouldn't see much of a difference compared to the web browser, depending on your current encoding. The Roku only supports a few variants, such h.264 in mp4, but not in flv, etc. You don't have to stream in HD, you can stream in any supported size.

Anyway as much market data as possible would be great, and let us know if we want to tackle this now, or later.

It would also be interesting to know what/how Roku is marketing or helping to market channels to the general public. Plus if we are selling Roku boxes on our site along side the ability for our users to stream to the box, what's in it for us? 🙂

Thanks, we are in the final stages of deciding the direction to head for the next three months and we are interested but realized we don't have enough data.

It's worth noting that development is very easy and entry is extremely cheap. $60 + a free SDK download. That would give you a good idea of what it would take to actually deploy a channel. Some devs here seem able to whip out a channel for QVC within a day or so...

[kelly_j_anderso]

If you are looking to make a Roku channel I would say go for it if it will take you 80 man hours or less, otherwise it is too much of an investment for a device that is on the verge of being shoved out of the market entirely and replaced with devices with 10x the market share or more.

Unfortunately once Apple TV fully populates the retail channel, relative market share for the Roku will tank. With out having a retail channel in place it will be very difficult for Roku to compete. The only thing that Roku has going for it right now is Hulu Plus, the channel store and the $59.00 model. It is an inevitability that Apple will release an app store for the Apple TV in the not too distant future and that app store will blow the Roku channel store out of the watter in every way (Unless Roku has an astounding OS update up their sleeve). All Apple needs to add to take every advantage away from the Roku is to release a subscription model that competes with Hulu Plus or add Hulu Plus and the gig is up for Roku. At that point the only advantage Roku will have is its $59.00 product, of course 9 months from today the Apple TV 3 will come out at $99.00 and the Apple TV 2 will drop to $59.00. Once all three of Roku's advantages are countered by Apple and devices using Google TV Roku will just be a foot note about a company that had both first to market advantage and market share advantage and failed to capitalize on those advantages by failing to exploit them aggressively.

To survive in the face of Apple TV and Google TV (when a $99 GTV box comes out) Roku needs:
1) A retail strategy, with out being in retail they simply will not have the mind share required to be compared to the other products.
2) An enhanced OpenGL based interface that allows for fast and high end graphical interfaces to compete with the rich interfaces on their competition.
3) An enhanced SDK that allows developers to work as fast and efficiently as the Google TV SDK and the Apple iOS SDK

Even if Roku pulled the trigger on all three of those needs, I suspect it is too late, had they been in retail stores when the Apple TV was announced they may have ridden those coattails into tripling their revenue.

I have loved my Roku since I bought it shortly after it was released, and I am eagerly awaiting the release of Hulu Plus. That being said I find it hard to believe that my beloved streaming internet video box will not be gathering dust in my electronics graveyard by this time next year.

[TheEndless]

What a ridiculously bold, unfounded, and unnecessary assessment. There's not a single opinion stated in there that's based on fact.

"kelly.j.anderson" wrote:
It is an inevitability that Apple will release an app store for the Apple TV in the not too distant future and that app store will blow the Roku channel store out of the watter in every way (Unless Roku has an astounding OS update up their sleeve)

While I would agree that it's inevitable that Apple will release an app store for the Apple TV, it's taken them over 6 months to update the firmware for the iPad, what makes you think they'll update the Apple TV in the "not too distant future"? And even if they did, there will still be a fair wait for new apps to be developed and approved for the device.

"kelly.j.anderson" wrote:
9 months from today the Apple TV 3 will come out at $99.00 and the Apple TV 2 will drop to $59.00

The first generation Apple TV is still more expensive than the new Apple TV, and there were 4 years between the two. What makes you think they'll release a new version in under a year? And if it's as good as you seem to think it will be, why would they need to?

"kelly.j.anderson" wrote:
(when a $99 GTV box comes out)

Do you have some information that no one else does? The current Google TV is $299. What makes you think there will be a $200 price drop anytime soon?

"kelly.j.anderson" wrote:
1) A retail strategy, with out being in retail they simply will not have the mind share required to be compared to the other products.

Roku already has a retail strategy, via their partnership with Netgear. The Netgear Roku boxes are already available at Fry's, and will soon be available at Best Buy and other big box stores.

"kelly.j.anderson" wrote:
2) An enhanced OpenGL based interface that allows for fast and high end graphical interfaces to compete with the rich interfaces on their competition.

Roku has already hinted at major interface updates coming. That aside, I personally find the current Apple TV Netflix interface to be very cumbersome and unfriendly. Otherwise the interface elsewhere is nothing but a black screen with cover art and reflections, with a soft blue glow around black buttons. I'm not really sure what's "high end" or "rich" about that, but ok...

"kelly.j.anderson" wrote:
3) An enhanced SDK that allows developers to work as fast and efficiently as the Google TV SDK and the Apple iOS SDK

Have you developed using the Android and iOS SDKs? While certainly more robust, I wouldn't categorize either one as fast or efficient. I can produce an app using the Roku SDK in less than a day, whereas producing the same app for Android or iOS would take a week or more. Unless you've developed on each of these platforms, I'm not sure how you can make any judgment here.

All of that aside, the OP asked about current Roku market share, not where you personally think Roku will be in a year. With nearly a million devices sold, I think they have a pretty significant lead on any competitive devices, especially when those devices haven't even been available for a month yet...

EDIT: I just read the blog linked in your profile, and it seems to have the opposite opinion of what you posted here. What's up with that?