Roku has done well since IPO. As of September 2018 the stock is trading at 2 - 3 times its original price and the reason is fairly simple. Roku had a very large user base before it's IPO and is controlling at least half of the devices for sale in the streaming set top box market. Roku has also proven to their investors that they are profitable by adding advertisements to their platform.
Unfortunately for Roku there is serious risk in their future. That risk comes from three companies named Apple, Amazon, and Google. All three of them are competitors to Roku with Amazon becoming very serious competition fast. Amazon is now on Best Buy branded TV's that are literalled all over their store. For Best Buy to survice they had to make a deal with the devil (Amazon) and that has had serious implimications on Roku. If Google decides to push its Android TV platform over its Chromecast platform they could also be just as competitive. That is Roku’s biggest problem. Their competition can compete with Roku as much as they want to. Their competitors have immense brand recognition and have enough money to burn in any way they feel like it. Roku does not have this kind of cash. In my opinion they also don't have the brand recognition. Sure, we all relate the go to set top box to watch Netflix on as the Roku. However, most users are becoming more and more aware of Rokus competitors. Its competitors have brand recognition that is something that is almost impossible to compete with. Google and search and its portfolio of Google services. Amazon and it's giant ecommerce store. Apple’s brand loyalty and recognition doesn't even need to be mentioned it's so powerful. Do people share the same recognition and loyalty to Roku as they do these other juggernaut companies? In my opinion no and when end users learn that Roku’s competition has better options I don't think they will bat an eye and drop their Roku.
You might now be wondering why I think Roku won't be able to continue to offer as good of a product as the competition. What can’t Roku do that the others do or will that will drive people to leave Roku? There are a few big reasons for this but one of the largest ones is Artificial Intelligence which many current day consumers can relate to as personal assistants. It's not hard to figure out who I am talking about when I mention personal assistants with Roku’s competition. The names are used in many of a our day to day lives now. I am referring to Google Assistant, Siri and of course Alexa. Apple’s usage of Siri on it’s iPhones have made their personal assistant very popular. The usage of Google Assistant on Android smartphones and Google Homes have made Google very popular in households. Lastly, Amazon created the home AI market with their Echo devices which house Alexa. The problem for Roku is people are getting more and more used to these assistants and all three of them work with their respective Smart TV operating systems. I can talk to these assistants and have them find me tv shows, show me the weather and even use them to do shopping on my TV. Even simple commands like turning the TV off and on go a long way. The only way to have a successful voice assistant is with years of user data, piles of cash and plenty of users. Roku only has users and the only data they have on them is for TV usage. Fact is Roku will never be able to offer this level of integration that their competition will and is today.
As a TV operation system app developer I also get to see where Roku is behind from an app development standpoint. Yes, it is easy to get a simple streaming app up and running but we are starting to do more and more with our TVs. There are much more interactive apps and neate guides to find content on. It is almost impossible for Roku to keep up with the same user experience as its competitors. Writing TV apps for Apple and Android is very normalized and capable. Building anything comparatively fancy on a Roku device is almost impossible and the experience for the end user is very noticable. You will see this in popular apps like Playstation Vue or DirecTV Now. Their guides and apps are just sluggish and more clunky compared to their Apple TV, Fire TV or Android TV counterparts. I hope Roku is using it's investor money to improve the experience of writing apps for their platform but I fear it may be too little too late. Especially considering Roku uses a proprietary programming language that is very uncommon unlike the popular languages its competitors use.
Exclusives are also a problem for Roku. We are also seeing Apple, Google and Amazon get into creating its own content. Besides Google with their YouTube TV I don’t see Amazon and Apple sharing their content with Roku in the future. Content is king and as soon as they start having Netflix or HBO calibur shows that are only available on their platforms people will see less and less reasons to pick up a Roku. As mentioned earlier Amazon is also using its leverage to force the largest brick and mortar retail store (Best Buy) to start installing Amazon's smart TV OS in Best Buy branded Insignia TVs. In return Amazon is selling products for Best Buy on Amazon.com.
Now, I would love to say buy Roku now but be careful of holding the stock long term but that doesn't seem to be how investing works these days. Take Fitbit for example. The stock is trading for almost 5 times less than its all time and short lived high. Fitbit was putting up great numbers but no matter what their earnings reports showed investors just couldn't stop thinking about Apple’s Watch. The Apple Watch which wasn't even selling near the levels it is today just continued to drive Fitibit stock into the ground where it has stayed since 2016.
Hopefully I am wrong and Roku continues to flourish. Competition in the streaming industry is a great thing just like any other industry. Unfortunately, next time I ask myself if I want to purchase Roku stock I am going to stay as far away as possible.
Updated April 2026 by the AdamApps Team
It has been over seven years since we published this article in September 2018, and the Roku story has played out in a way that largely validated the concerns we raised — though the timeline was not what anyone expected.
When this article was written in September 2018, Roku was trading at roughly $30-40 per share. What happened next was remarkable: the stock went on an absolute tear during the pandemic-era streaming boom, eventually reaching an all-time high near $490 per share in July 2021. For a brief period, it looked like our warning was completely wrong. Roku was riding a wave of cord-cutting, stay-at-home entertainment spending, and investor enthusiasm for anything related to streaming.
Then the competitive pressures we warned about started to bite. Amazon aggressively expanded Fire TV into smart TVs sold at Best Buy, Walmart, and other major retailers, offering them at prices Roku could not match because Amazon was willing to subsidize the hardware to sell Prime memberships and products. Google pushed Google TV into televisions from Sony, TCL, Hisense, and others, building exactly the kind of built-in smart TV ecosystem we predicted would threaten Roku's standalone devices. Apple continued to dominate the premium streaming device market with Apple TV.
The result? Roku's stock price collapsed from that $490 peak, losing over 85% of its value in the subsequent years. As of 2026, the stock trades in a range that is not dramatically different from where it was when we wrote this article in 2018. Investors who bought during the pandemic hype and held on experienced devastating losses. The company has struggled to grow its average revenue per user, faced margin pressure from increasing content costs, and watched competitors chip away at its device market share.
Competition from Amazon, Google, and Apple proved to be exactly the existential threat we described. Amazon's strategy of embedding Fire TV into affordable smart TVs from major retailers has been particularly effective. When a consumer walks into Best Buy or Walmart and buys a budget TV, it increasingly comes with Fire TV or Google TV built in — not Roku. The days of Roku being the default set-top box for cord-cutters are fading.
The AI assistant prediction was spot on. We wrote that Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri would be differentiators that Roku could not match. That has proven true. Smart home integration, voice control, and cross-device ecosystems are now table stakes for streaming platforms. Roku's voice capabilities have improved, but they still lag behind what Amazon, Google, and Apple offer because those companies have billions of users generating data across phones, speakers, and other devices that Roku simply does not have access to.
The developer experience concerns remain valid. As the developers behind MarketCast — a stock market app we have built for Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV, and Google TV — we can confirm from firsthand experience that Roku remains one of the most difficult and frustrating platforms to develop for. Roku uses BrightScript, a proprietary programming language that is not used anywhere else in the software industry. Building a quality app for Roku requires an entirely separate codebase from what developers maintain for every other platform. Android TV and Fire TV both use standard Android development tools that millions of developers already know. Apple TV uses Swift, the same language used for iPhone and iPad apps. Roku stands alone in requiring developers to learn and maintain expertise in a language with zero transferability. This makes it harder and more expensive for developers to support Roku, which ultimately means fewer quality apps compared to competing platforms. It is a real problem that compounds over time as the gap in app quality between Roku and its competitors widens.
Content exclusives became a real differentiator. Apple TV+ launched original content available through Apple devices and the Apple TV app. Amazon Prime Video is deeply integrated with Fire TV in ways other platforms cannot replicate. While Roku launched its own free content through The Roku Channel, it has not been able to compete with the massive budgets that Apple and Amazon pour into original programming.
We did not anticipate the pandemic-driven streaming boom that would temporarily mask Roku's competitive weaknesses and send the stock to nearly $500. If you had bought Roku in September 2018 and sold at the peak in 2021, you would have made over 10x your money. Timing is everything in the stock market, and we were early rather than wrong — a distinction that matters a great deal when real money is on the line.
We also did not predict that Roku would pivot toward advertising revenue as aggressively as it did. Roku's business model shifted from primarily selling hardware to monetizing its user base through advertising on The Roku Channel and across its platform. This was a smart strategic move that gave the company a new revenue stream, though it has not been enough to overcome the competitive pressures on device market share.
In the original 2018 article, we compared Roku's situation to Fitbit — a company that posted great numbers but was ultimately ground down by competition from Apple Watch. That comparison turned out to be prescient. Google acquired Fitbit in 2021 for a fraction of its peak valuation, effectively confirming that the company could not survive independently against the tech giants. Roku has not been acquired, but the stock's trajectory from all-time highs tells a similar story: a niche hardware company that thrives in the early stages of a market but struggles once the major platforms focus their full attention and resources on the same space.
Roku still has a large installed base and its platform reaches tens of millions of households. The company is not disappearing tomorrow. But the long-term competitive dynamics we identified in 2018 have only intensified. Amazon, Google, and Apple continue to invest heavily in their streaming platforms while Roku operates with a fraction of their resources.
For investors considering Roku stock today, the same core question from our original article still applies: can a company whose primary business is a streaming platform survive long-term against competitors who view streaming as just one small piece of a much larger ecosystem? Amazon uses Fire TV to sell Prime memberships and drive e-commerce. Google uses Google TV to serve ads and feed its data business. Apple uses Apple TV to keep users locked into its ecosystem of devices and services. Roku has to make money primarily from the platform itself, and that remains a structurally disadvantaged position.
As always, do your own research and consult a financial advisor before making investment decisions. You can track Roku and the rest of your portfolio on the big screen with MarketCast, available for free on Fire TV, Google TV, and Apple TV. We have not built a Roku version of MarketCast — and after seven years, we still have no plans to.
About the author: This article was written by the MarketCast team at AdamApps LLC. As the developers behind MarketCast, we build tools to help everyday investors access financial data on their TVs. Our perspective comes from years of building apps across every major streaming platform. Learn more about us.