Broadcast technology could pull Europe out of slump

Angry Birds creator in on the action

Another European TV-related company tipped for greater success by Magister Advisors was Finish media entertainment company Rovio, set up in 2003 by three students from Helsinki University of Technology, going on to launch the  first commercial real-time multiplayer mobile game in the world originally called King of the Cabbage World, later renamed Mole War.

However, Rovio is best known for its successful gaming franchise called Angry Birds. This created a brand that has boosted its sales in a strategy that is now being copied by some TV networks, notably Fox, which has built a consumer products business based on merchandising worth over $2 billion a year inspired by the Angry Birds online purchasing model. Rovio is also targeting TV increasingly itself, having announced a partnership with Roku in June 2011 to make its games available via the latter’s Internet-connected set-top boxes.

Apart from these consumer facing companies, Europe has more than its share of expanding young companies almost right across the TV ecosystem, with France punching above its weight alongside the UK, the Nordics and Germany. Among prominent French successes is Broadpeak, which has carved out a position in OTT delivery focusing on CDNs, with its main differentiator being its nanoCDN. This recruits equipment within the consumer’s home such as set top boxes and gateways to improve efficiency of content delivery and reduce consumption of network bandwidth.

Broadpeak is now collaborating with another of France’s emerging contenders, SoftAtHome, whose home operating platform is pre-integrated with Broadpeak’s nanoCDN to deliver OTT and cloud services using multicast technology, cutting linear network costs further. SoftAtHome is a software company backed by Orange, Sagemcom and Etisalat to deliver converged home broadband services comprising components from an emerging ecosystem of application developers, integrators and hardware vendors to accelerate the advent of the smart digital home.

Another French company advancing strongly is video compression vendor ATEME, which has claimed some notable scalps such as DirecTV, BSkyB, and the European Broadcasting Union’s Eurovision network, in competition with bigger players such as Ericsson.