AMSTERDAM—End-to-end OTT provider Opera TV has rebranded as Vewd after officially being carved out from Opera in late 2016.
The move comes after Opera sold off some of its mobile assets to a Chinese firm, sold a majority of the TV business to a firm in New York and Opera TV became a standout unit of Opera Software.
Vewd CEO Aneesh Rajaram said that Vewd’s growth has accelerated since the company came out of Opera as a whole, and so the new name is built to reflect the expanded business strategy at Vewd driving that growth.
Vewd works with companies hoping to launch OTT services or products and provides access to silicon vendors, helps with end-user experience and provides access to its branded app store with more than 1,000 apps, as well as other support services. Vewd is focused on the retail and consumer electronics industry. In the U.S., retail smart TVs from Sony and Vizio all ship with Vewd’s embedded software. In addition, TiVo retail devices ship with Vewd core products, Ericsson’s MediaFirst Linux platform is based on Vewd software and about nine global Tier 1 pay-TV operators use Vewd products to enable OTT services, according to Rajaram.
Rajaram said that nearly 50 million devices ship globally with Opera TV products in them.
Plus, the rebrand makes it so Vewd doesn’t have to keep explaining it doesn’t make browsers.
“This is a way we’re out of the shadow of Opera’s old browser business,” Rajaram said.
On top of the rebranding, Vewd also announced a new YouTube integration with its SDK. Vewd will now provide access to YouTube’s new rendering engine which is maintained by YouTube, and is only meant to render the YouTube application. As for YouTube, it gets to take advantage of Vewd’s reach.
“This centralizes things on one team. And to scale things, they can rely on us,” Rajaram said.