Wireless infrastructure company Alcatel announced it purchased the network division of streaming-video company PacketVideo Corp., a move Alcatel said will bolster its video offerings to include video messaging, video telephony, video conferencing, video streaming and video downloading. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“Video is all about sharing emotions. It’s about seeing people face to face wherever you and they are, as well as accessing and sharing attractive video content in a ubiquitous manner. For this reason mobile video services are becoming more and more important to the entire mobile industry,” said Etienne Fouques, president of Alcatel’s mobile communications activities. “The acquisition of PacketVideo’s Network Solutions unit is a key step in strengthening our value proposition and solutions offering for our customers, who play a key role in expanding the market for data services.”
PacketVideo will remain a privately held company and will focus on its device efforts. The company said it will continue to work to develop and integrate multimedia software for mobile phones, video phones and camera phones for device manufacturers. PacketVideo said it will continue to work closely with its network business through Alcatel to ensure interoperability.
“PacketVideo has been on the leading edge of the mobile media revolution for more than five years,” said James Brailean, PacketVideo’s chief executive officer. “We are very pleased to see mobile video grow from an idea in our labs into the highly capable video-enabled handsets now available worldwide. And we are confident that through this transfer to Alcatel, our server technology can scale globally to serve the growing mobile media market.”
PacketVideo counts about eight official carrier deals, including one with heavyweight NTT DoCoMo Inc. The company has about half a dozen announced mobile-phone deals with about a dozen more in development, and its movie player is featured on handsets including Sony Ericsson’s advanced P900 device. PacketVideo also sells its video player over its Internet site.
Although long discussed in wireless, streaming video services are rapidly becoming a reality. Sprint PCS recently introduced a streaming TV service working over a Java application. A variety of Nokia Corp.’s high-end phones include video players. And in Europe, network operator 3 has heavily promoted its third-generation video phones.
