Motorola has announced its intentions to acquire Broadbus Technologies, a privately- provider of technology solutions for Television on Demand (TOD), the next logical progression from VOD.

 

Boxborough, Massachusetts-based Broadbus Technologies offers carrier-class technology solutions designed to enable the distribution of on-demand content to consumers through multiple devices.  

 

Unlike other VOD solutions, Broadbus technology depends on a solid-state architecture, using Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) to serve up video, which means the entire platform can use less space and power than traditional hard disk-based technology, while providing increased performance, reliability and scalability to keep pace as the on-demand market evolves and needs change and customer counts rise.

 

Some analysts have projected that the video-on-demand market will reach about $11 billion in revenues sometime during the next four years.  Motorola’s (News - Alert) acquisition of Broadbus allows the company to take advantage of that growth, extending its robust video delivery platform into new markets such as mobile video, video-on-demand (VOD), time shifting, network-based DVR, on-demand ad insertion (ODAI), and switched digital video (SDV). 

 

Using Broadbus’ technology, which is designed to store and deliver video content in different formats, Motorola will seek to expand its distribution not only to consumer electronics in the home, but also to mobile devices.

 

“Consumers expect to access video entertainment on the different devices they have, inside and outside of their home, in varying formats — and to have it available upon request,” said Dan Moloney, President, Motorola Connected Home Solutions.

 

Maloney continued: “The addition of Broadbus Technologies will bring Motorola’s video delivery platform one step closer to enabling this vision of seamless mobility by providing us with field-proven content management and delivery solutions.”

 

Founded in 1999, Broadbus Technologies currently has more than 60 video on demand deployments worldwide, including U.S. giants Comcast, Charter Communications, and Time Warner Cable. 

 

The addition of Broadbus will serve to buttress Motorola’s leadership position in the video market — the company says it ranks first in set-top box shipments, digital video MPG2 encoders, and digital video delivery (it has more than 2060 digital video headends deployed globally).

 

Though financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, the acquisition is expected to close in Q3 2006 following regulatory and other approvals.