Roku Launches Wireless Sound Bar Reference Design to Expand Brand
Roku introduced a wireless reference design to allow CE brands to build and sell wireless sound bars with Roku technology under their own brands, it said Friday. TCL will launch the first Roku wireless sound bar at its Tuesday CES news conference, Mark Ely, Roku vice president-product strategy, told us in a Wednesday pre-brief. Element is due to launch a 2.0 Roku TV Ready sound bar and 2.1 sound bar with a subwoofer later this month, Ely said. Last year, TCL, Hisense, Enclave, Sound United and Bose released Roku TV Ready-certified audio products in the U.S., he said.
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Roku also announced Friday, as expected (see 2101040057), it bought distribution rights for Quibi's portfolio, giving the platform exclusive short-form content. Founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg in 2018 and headed by former HP CEO Meg Whitman, Quibi shut down in October (see report, Oct. 23 issue), six months after launching in the early days of the pandemic. Though industry experts generally praised the short-form service's content and concept, its business model couldn't hold up. Quibi subscriptions were $5 monthly with ads and $8 without. Roku will make the content available for free, with ads, within its Roku Channel.
The Quibi content library includes scripted series, alternative and reality programming, and documentaries. In addition to the titles that ran on Quibi, more than a dozen new programs are due to make exclusive debuts on The Roku Channel, which the company said reached an estimated 61.8 million people in U.S. households in Q4.
Roku’s wireless reference design uses the company’s proprietary audio technology to connect with any Roku TV model and ensures synchronized audio and video, a simple setup process and unified operation of audio and video from the Roku TV remote, Ely said. The wireless sound bar reference design is an expansion of the Roku TV Ready program that last year brought the streaming platform to audio products from TCL, Hisense, Bose, Enclave and Sound United’s Denon brand, Ely said.
On whether Roku plans to move into the higher-end segment of the audio market, such as the high-resolution Wireless Speaker and Audio (WiSA) space, Ely said the company’s focus is on “quality, value and simplicity.” He noted the Enclave brand uses WiSA for wireless surround sound, but those solutions tend to be more expensive. Roku’s focus is on quality but with a value bent, he said.
Roku had 51.2 million active accounts at the end of 2020, up by about 14 million for the year, it said Wednesday. Roku owners streamed about 17 billion hours of video in Q4, bringing the 2020 total to 58.7 billion streaming hours, a 55% bump from 2019. Roku led the streaming platform market with 38% market share in the U.S. and 31% in Canada from Jan. 5-Dec. 26, it said Friday, citing NPD.
Roku plans to expand the Roku TV Ready program internationally and will announce partners and products by country at a later stage, Ely said. Roku TV models are available from more than 15 TV OEM brands and are sold in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Mexico and Brazil.