The Device Is Just the Beginning
Announced this morning, Fox’s proposed acquisition of Roku is the latest reminder that in technology, distribution and recurring revenue are increasingly worth more than the devices themselves.
As I leave for InfoComm this morning, Fox has announced its intention to acquire Roku. On the surface, it sounds like a media company buying a streaming device manufacturer, and a consumer story as opposed to an enterprise one. In reality, it’s something much bigger.
Fox isn’t buying Roku because streaming boxes are suddenly a high-growth hardware business. It is buying access to millions of users, a powerful content distribution platform, advertising inventory, audience data, and an ongoing relationship with consumers. The hardware simply provides the entry point.
That timing is interesting because I’m about to spend the next several days walking the halls of InfoComm, one of the world’s largest professional AV technology shows, looking at thousands of new hardware products.
And yet, increasingly, the hardware isn’t the business anymore.
There will be plenty of devices on display. New cameras. New displays. New collaboration bars. New room systems. New audio products. New control systems.
But many of the companies exhibiting them are no longer focused solely on selling the hardware itself. The device has become the mechanism for establishing a relationship. The real business begins after the hardware is installed.
You can see this trend well beyond professional AV.
Walmart didn’t spend billions acquiring Vizio because it wanted to become a television manufacturer. The value was in SmartCast, the advertising platform, viewer analytics, and direct access to millions of consumers sitting in front of screens every day.
Fox’s proposed acquisition of Roku reinforces the same trend. Roku provides distribution, audience relationships, advertising inventory, and insight into what viewers watch. The hardware gets Roku into the living room. The platform creates the long-term value.
Amazon understood this years ago. The Fire TV stick itself (and nearly all Amazon hardware) was never the primary business. The value came from subscriptions, content, commerce, advertising, and the ongoing customer relationship created by placing Amazon’s platform directly in front of Amazon’s customers.
The same evolution is happening throughout enterprise technology.
In the collaboration market, conference room devices increasingly serve as gateways into larger ecosystems. A Teams Room is not simply a collection of cameras, microphones, and displays. It is an endpoint within Microsoft’s broader platform of subscriptions, management tools, workplace services, AI capabilities, and cloud infrastructure.
Cisco has followed a similar path. The hardware remains important, but the long-term value increasingly comes from subscriptions, cloud management, security services, analytics, and platform integration.
Even Zoom’s transformation reflects this shift. Zoom built its reputation by delivering one of the industry’s best meeting experiences. Today, however, the company is investing heavily in becoming a broader workplace platform with AI agents, workflow automation, and business process integration. That strategy reflects a growing industry belief that recurring platform revenue is more valuable than selling a standalone product, and that making the best collaboration experience is not enough to drive that growing revenue in an AI-obsessed world.
This doesn’t mean hardware no longer matters.
Quite the opposite.
Hardware remains critical because it establishes presence. It creates distribution. It places a company’s technology in a room, on a desk, in a conference space, or in a living room. Without that footprint, the ongoing relationship may never begin.
The difference is that hardware is increasingly viewed as the starting point rather than the destination.
As I walk the halls of InfoComm this week, I’ll certainly be evaluating the devices themselves. Some will be innovative. Some will be incremental. Some will undoubtedly be forgettable.
But I’ll also be asking a different question.
What relationship does this device enable?
Because in 2026, the most valuable product may no longer be the hardware. The most valuable product may be the recurring connection between the company and the customer that the hardware makes possible.