This week, Roku announced its first quarter 2019 earnings. Hidden deep in its SEC filing about its earnings was information about their Research and Development (R&D) team.
According to Roku, they increased spending and their R&D team size. Roku increased spending on R&D to $21.6 million—a 63% jump over the same period in 2018.
Roku said most of their 63% increase in R&D came from a higher engineering headcount. Roku spent $17.1 million on engineers for the R&D team. Roku also spent $1.8 million on platform and product development and $2.7 million on expenses like consulting and outside services.
From the looks of it, Roku is staffing its R&D team with new engineers. Why?
We do have a few hints as to what Roku could be working on. Roku has for some time talking about a new Roku user interface on the Roku home screen. Could Roku be why they are staffing up? It is possible—even Roku’s CEO has talked about a new user interface being a project Roku has been thinking about.
Roku could also be staffing up to expand its hardware team. That could point to more new streaming players, speakers, and other Roku products. What these products are is unknown right now.
What would you like to see Roku spend time working on? Leave us a comment and let us know what you want to see from Roku.
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