Roku reported its second quarterly earnings report ever, since becoming a publicly traded company. Andre Swanston, CEO of Tru Optik, an audience measurement and data management platform for OTT, was with us to share why he thinks Roku is positioned for success.
Swanston said the OTT space is "so wild" in terms of the growth in penetration and time spent. On top of that, he said most of that growth is on ad supported platforms, not services like Netflix. This bodes well for Roku because they are the only pure-play OTT company on the street, Swanston said.
Roku debuted a licensing program for smart audio devices and expects the first to ship this fall. They're going up against Amazon, Google, and Apple. Swanston said Roku has no strategic advantage for a smart speaker and does not anticipate it being a significant revenue generator.
Google announced it will be updating its privacy restrictions that will limit tracking throughout apps on android devices. The update is similar to Apple's previous update, which ended up causing companies like Meta to lose billions of dollars on the market. Cheddar News was joined by David Trainer, CEO of New Constructs, to discuss the implications of the new privacy updates.
Global semiconductor sales topped $500 billion dollars for the first time in history in 2021. Demand for microchips has been at an all-time high amid a global shortage, but questions still remain about the future of semiconductor production. Cheddar News was joined by Tristan Gerra, Senior Research Analyst at Baird, to answer some of these questions and more.
Stephen Gardner, director at ETF Managers Group, explains why investors shouldn't be rushing to sell vaccine stocks like Moderna or BioNTech even as the spread of COVID-19 slows down.
