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Roku customer growth begins to stall

Streaming platform Roku says it added more than one million customers in its first quarter of 2022 to bring the total number of active users to just over 61 million.

The figure represents a slowdown in growth at Roku, one of the dominant streaming platforms in the United States, as it competes with devices and platforms offered by Amazon, Samsung, LG, Comcast and others.

In a conference call with investors on Thursday, Roku executives shrugged off the competition and said its best days are yet to come.

“We’ve been battling big name competitors successfully for a number of years,” Steven Louden, Roku’s chief financial executive, said on the call. “We feel pretty good about the competitive moats for Roku.”

Adding to its optimism, Roku continued to see an increase in the number of streamed hours for content offered by apps available on its platform, including its flagship ad-supported streamer Roku Channel.

Streaming hours increased by 1.4 billion hours over the previous quarter, reaching 20.9 billion hours to round out the quarter that ended in March. The streamer acquired content from now-defunct service Quibi, added several new ad-supported linear content channels and renewed distribution agreements with companies like Amazon that helped keep services available on the platform.

Revenue at Roku increased 28 percent compared to last year to settle at $734 million.

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About the Author:

Matthew Keys

Matthew Keys covers the business of broadcast and streaming TV, radio broadcasting, social media, technology and telecommunications. A journalist for over 15 years, Matthew previously worked at Thomson Reuters, KGO-TV in San Francisco, KTXL in Sacramento and McNaughton Newspapers. He received 9 California Journalism Awards between 2018 and 2020, and is a member of IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors).
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