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TWST: Can you give us a short history and overview of your company?
Mr. Forostowsky: Five years ago, we created technology that allows developers to
use Flash®* authoring tools,
combined with our own development kit, to create applications for digital
television set-top boxes. Videotron, a cable
company in Canada, deployed our player across their network and used it to
create a really rich and dynamic experience
for their digital TV customers. It gave them a lot of features that weren't
available anywhere else. Then Time Warner
Cable, the second-biggest operator in the US, with millions of set-top box
customers, adopted our technology for its digital
navigator.
Bluestreak originally designed its technology for the set-top box device, which
has much lower memory and
resources than the other devices we are all used to. That technology was a
great fit with mobile phones when we entered
the wireless market, and this was only a couple years after we were founded.
Orange is a big wireless operator in France and throughout Europe, and is the
second biggest mobile network
operator in the world. Orange has eight network wireless network operators in
Europe, and they wanted to let consumers
watch TV channels on their mobile handsets.
Two years ago, they asked if we could put the Bluestreak player that powered
interactive TV on the set-top box
inside a mobile phone. They wanted to offer a lot of innovative features . . .
program guides and end-user interfaces on top
of the video, advertisements, games, voting, and polling. Orange saw a big
opportunity to bring the best of interactive TV
to mobile phones.
So a year and a half ago, we installed our player inside Orange mobile phones,
and since that time they've used it
to launch some really successful mobile TV and video services. Orange has
decided to extend this mobile TV product with
Bluestreak to their eight countries in Europe, including the UK, Spain,
Portugal, Poland, Sweden, and Romania. We are
also implementing our player on a wide range of phones, including Nokia, Sony
Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, and Amoi,
and many others. So the player, which runs Flash files, does video-overlay and
gives viewers a better experience when
they watch TV, whether it's on their phones or at home.
We are based in Montreal with 60 engineers, and also have offices in Paris,
Dallas, and Hong Kong.
Tickers included in this excerpt: PVT
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The
Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does
not make stock recommendations.
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