Key Points
- Roku is expanding retail ties with Best Buy and Target as Walmart shifts some smart TVs to Vizio’s OS, reducing Roku’s role in holiday doorbusters.
- CEO Anthony Wood said Roku remains well-positioned, citing strong OEM partnerships with TCL and Hisense and nearly half of U.S. TV streaming on its platform.
- Roku plans to move TV production to Mexico and expects to surpass 100 million streamers served this year, with advertising driving most recent profits.
Roku is prioritizing an expansion of its retail partnerships with Best Buy, Target and others amid aggressive marketing of Vizio’s smart TVs by Walmart, the company’s CEO told investors this week.
On a conference call Thursday, Roku CEO Anthony Wood said the streaming-focused company is “focused on broadening and diversifying our retail distribution” amid indications that Walmart is converting Vizio into a private-label brand.
Walmart is one of the biggest sellers of smart TVs in the country. Roku has enjoyed a reliable partnership with Walmart in recent years, with the company offering a sub-$20 streaming device and licensing its streaming platform to Walmart’s Onn brand for doorbuster smart TVs sold around the holidays.
This recent holiday shopping season was the first in which Walmart’s doorbuster Onn TV was powered by Vizio OS, The Desk reported in November. It was also the first holiday quarter where Walmart didn’t sell an exclusive, low-cost Roku streaming player.
Typically, retailers begin stocking up on hot holiday items months in advanced, meaning Roku likely had a heads-up in the middle of 2025 that Walmart was not going to lean on the company for its doorbuster streaming devices.
But Wood said the company isn’t too concerned about its relationship with Walmart: The retailer continues to sell Roku’s normal streaming devices and smart TVs, and Roku is focused on building out its retail relationships with other brick-and-mortar and online stores.
That strategy has played out at Best Buy and Target, where Roku’s streaming devices and Select, Plus and Pro model TVs are sold. Best Buy is also selling Pioneer-branded Roku smart TVs, while Target has recently started offering low-cost, Roku-powered smart sets under their own white label called Hiro.
Amazon, which competes against Roku with its Fire TV operating system and related devices, also sells Roku smart TVs and smarthome accessories through its online store.
“In addition to retailers, TV (original equiment manufacturers) are key strategic partners for us, and we’ve expanded our licensing and distribution agreements with two of our largest- and longest-term Roku TV partners,” Wood said.
Those partners are TCL and Hisense, which have sold Roku-powered smart TVs for nearly a decade. Both companies are still making Roku-powered sets, but newer models and inventory reviewed by The Desk show TCL and Hisense have switched to Android TV for their lower-cost, small-screen smart TVs over the past two years — ever since Roku announced they were going to start making their own TVs — and the trend has continued to larger-screen, more-premium sets.
Still, Wood says Roku has good market position based on the widespread use of its streaming platform in American homes and the continued availability of smart TVs at different price points.
“Nearly half of all TV streaming in the U.S. happens on the Roku platform, and we’re best in class at monetization, which gives us a lot of flexibility to invest in building scale and distribution,” Wood said.
Roku is also shifting production of its own smart TVs to Mexico this year, which will allow the company to better compete on pricing across its budget and high-end models.
“The number of Roku TV units sold, you know, it may go up or down, you know, from quarter to quarter, but overall, we expect to continue to grow our scale of streaming households in the U.S. and globally,” Wood said.
Roku stopped releasing the precise number of customers who use its platform, opting instead to focus on engagement and other metrics as barometers of the company’s success. Advertising and subscription sales — which Roku categorizes as its platform business — accounted for most of the company’s $1.4 billion in profit earned during its most-recent financial quarter.
While Roku isn’t providing regular updates on how many streamers are using its platform, Wood said the company projects Roku will surpass 100 million streamers served sometime this year.
