By Allison Watkinson
TLL Reporter
The streaming device company Roku is planning to release its first line of Smart TVs that are both designed and manufactured by the company itself.
The announcement of the new Roku Smart TV product lines was made during the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Prior to this announcement, the tech company had only offered Roku-branded TVs through licensing deals with third-party manufacturing partners such as TCL, Durabrand, Sanyo, RCA, Hisense, Sharp, Westinghouse, and Philips.
This is an interesting situation from a licensing perspective since Roku will need to walk a fine line to ensure that it doesn’t alienate its current licensing partners within the Smart TV retail market.
However, there is an established precedent in the industry for Roku’s new corporate strategy. In 2021, Amazon released its first line of Amazon Fire Smart TVs that were designed and manufactured in-house.
In addition, several Roku executives such as Mustafa Ozgen, Chris Larson, and Anthony Wood have expressed the company’s commitment to maintaining good relationships with OEM licensing partners.
“Our goal is to continue to create an even better TV experience for everyone,” said Ozgen, Roku’s president of Devices. “These Roku-branded TVs will not only complement the current lineup of partner-branded Roku TV models, but also allow us to enable future smart TV innovations.”
Roku’s recent announcement of its new in-house Smart TV product lines is likely an attempt to compensate for the company’s falling stock prices throughout 2022.
Roku, like many other tech corporations, has been heavily affected by widespread inflation from the economic downturn. This resulted in the company laying off 200 of its US-based employees this past November.
The new Roku Select and Roku Plus Series TV collections will focus on providing streaming features through the company’s proprietary operating system.
All models of the Select Series will come with the standard Roku Voice Remote that features push-to-talk controls. All models of the Plus Series will include the more high-tech Roku Voice Remote Pro, which offers hands-free voice commands.
The Roku Select and Roku Plus Series TVs will be officially released during the spring of 2023.
“Our brand of televisions will allow us to test and introduce compelling features on our own product, which we will then make available for our full Roku TV OEM program,” said Larson, VP of Retail Strategy at Roku.
Although it is still too early to know for certain how this will affect Roku’s long-term market share going forward, the company’s stock has been increasing in price since it announced the upcoming Smart TV collection on Jan. 4, 2023.
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