Roku’s share price plummeted 25 per cent, after the company revealed a less-than-stellar first quarter forecast.

Roku expects current-quarter revenue of $720 million (A$1b), which falls far below Wall Street estimates of $748.5 million (A$1.04b).

In addition, the company missed fourth quarter estimates, with $865 million in revenue far below Wall Street’s predicted $894 million.

Rokus is blaming supply chain issues in the television market for the lower-than-expected figures, and point towards future pain for the industry.

“For 2022, we expect ongoing supply chain disruptions will continue to impact the global economy,” Roku CEO Anthony Wood told investors.

“This will affect the broader consumer electronics space, and the TV industry in particular.

“Overall TV unit sales are likely to remain below pre-COVID levels, which could affect our active account growth.”

Despite all this, Roku enjoyed a 55 per cent leap in total revenue of 2021, netting $2.7 billion, up 55 per cent since 2020. But this was a COVID-driven spike, and while US$2.7 billion is nothing to sneeze at, Netflix spent US$17 billion on content alone in 2021, with US$19 billion earmarked for 2022.

So, what’s the next move for Roku? According to a well-placed source at Business Insider, Roku is looking to manufacture its own television sets, powered by its own OS.

Rokus has danced around this idea for a while, with streaming dongles and boxes, as well as licensing its OS to TCL for use in its own TVs. The company has taken this further recently, hosting a focus group demonstration.

“They showed different models, feature sets and names, sizes, price points,” a source told Business Insider.

“This is a manufacturing operation. They want to go into making their own TVs.”

A second source within the company told BI Rokus has “explored manufacturing of TV sets for more than a year.”

It’s a smart move, but a risky one, given the company’s own CEO blames supply chain issues in the TV world for Roku’s own slowdown.