TV2U now a producer: product in marketplace, page-39

Bob Morrison is the CEO from Xstream which is a European based entity who I believe have granted rights into the Australasian market to IOT related entities. I sat through his OTT key note presentation at Broadcast Asia just a few weeks ago which was impressive and they have a turnkey solution for operators like TV2U have.

Its hard to compare them with TV2U as apples to apples but they come with content licencing ready as well. The OTT space is crowded now with several go to market propositions out there. The underpinning technologies such as Verimatrix and Elemental and Akamai often show up in competitors solution architecture.

TV2U are trying to create a point of difference in their personalisation and anti-piracy technologies and strategies, coupled to granular back-end analytics. This is needed as bread and butter CDN solutions exist and OTT streaming in isolation is not a barrier to entry for other tech companies now as its mainstream and available to operators.

It was inevitable that other operators would enter the market in our region. Companies who focus on the user experience rather than the technology itself are winning if you look at industry commentary.

The marketing reach and strategic relationships that each operator possess will often win the day as I.T. tech is not always about the best technology wins. The competing claims in the OTT market are hard to drill down and pull apart into an objective reality for the average investor.

Technology partnerships via LOI or MOU are often actually reseller agreements in another name, according to the technology BDM's fronting the OTT component technology booths at the tradeshow. Large tech companies leverage smaller players in the market to find and create opportunities then sell wholesale price gear into that opportunity to reduce the COGS of the deal for the smaller player.

True partnerships are often recognised and found via looking at the large tech players collaboration community partners tab on the bigger vendors website. The vendors explained that typically there is an R&D play going on between the large vendor and the smaller niche partner towards a commercialised outcome.

For instance a prominent drone company was on the stall of a major OTT component vendor and showed how their composite technologies had been partnered towards an anti-poaching solution for reserves, fisheries and for anti-theft at storage facilities. They could not have created this each in isolation but collaborated to do so.

TV2U has its technology and business roadmap and its plans in place. Analysts at the conference I spoke to felt TV2U needs to land a big deal like Divan to demonstrate to the market that their potential can be commercialised and turned into business value. The Karaoke app is the start of this via tangible deliverables that the market can digest, rate and which sophisticated investors will look to see when making investment decisions.

TV2U needs to tighten its communication strategy to stakeholders in my opinion at this stage else let them be about their business and lets see how they perform by Xmas rather than next week, to gauge where their business is at. Their revamped website is a good start in my opinion.

DYOR.