Moving ever closer to completely dominating the smart TV market, Roku has announced that TV sets with its integrated streaming technology will soon hit stores with highly competitive price points.
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Roku TV manufactured by Hisense. TCL is also producing Roku TVs. |
How competitive? A 32-inch Roku-powered set manufactured by TCL--one of the two Chinese CE companies partnering with the over-the-top technology developer--comes with an MSRP of only $229.
Roku announced back in January at the Consumer Electronics Show that it was partnering with TCL and Hisense to integrate its streaming service--previously confined to set-tops and dongles--into TVs.
On Tuesday, Aug. 19, Roku revealed the first significant details about those products, which promise to significantly disrupt a smart TV market already struggling to compete with Roku's far greater content selection and ease-of-use.
"By combining Hisense's strengths in hardware design, manufacturing and scale with the Roku operating system we've created a new Smart TV that combines more entertainment choices, a fast and intuitive interface, and a very affordable price," said Jim Funk, senior VP of product management for Roku.
TCL is already taking pre-orders on Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) for its Roku TV models, while Hisense says it will begin selling its Roku products in "late September."
Of course, the largely Korean-headquartered power base for the smart TV market can probably wait.
While smart TVs have struggled to assemble a compelling selection of player apps for their products, as well as building elegant interfaces to package them, Roku--the No. 1 OTT device maker, according to numerous research surveys--has succeeded at both initiatives. Roku currently touts more than 1,500 programming channels, including all the major SVOD and transactional services.
"I can tell you the percentage of [smart TVs] that have a Roku box or Apple TV (NASDAQ: AAPL) box connected to them is very high," said former Samsung smart TV executive Richard Bullwinkle at a June technology conference covered by FierceCable.
For more:
- read this Roku press release (PDF)
Related links:
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