Roku Becomes Latest Streaming Giant to Launch Its Own Smart-TV Line

The company has faced growing competition in recent years from companies in the streaming industry. Amazon.com Inc., another major maker of streaming boxes and dongles, has its own branded smart TVs. In 2021,

Comcast

launched the XClass TV, which gave it a chance to promote its own streaming service, NBCUniversal’s Peacock app.

Having many people rely on its platform is crucial to Roku’s business, since the company derives most of its revenue from advertising, not hardware sales. Roku sells all ads viewed on its own streaming service, the Roku Channel, and sells some ads that appear on other streaming services viewed on Roku devices.

Roku’s manufacturing partners have launched co-branded TVs with Roku’s operating-system rivals.

TCL,

a longtime Roku manufacturing partner, launched TVs using Google’s smart TV operating system in 2020.

Walmart Inc.,

which has partnered with Roku on a co-branded smart TV under the Walmart brand Onn, will launch smart TVs based on Comcast’s operating system this year.

Roku declined to identify the manufacturer of its new smart TVs, but said the relationship would give it more control over the final product. In the past, Roku has had ownership over its software, but had to negotiate new hardware features and other hardware design alterations with the original equipment manufacturer, according to people familiar with the matter. For Roku’s own branded TVs, Roku will control the design entirely by itself. 

Roku announced the two new TV lines at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday: the lower-priced Roku Select (starting at $119) and the higher-end Roku Plus Series (as high as $999). Roku will sell the TVs both via retail partners and on its own website.

Write to Patience Haggin at [email protected]