SeaChange International (Nasdaq: SEAC), which earlier this week announced it had elevated interim CEO Raghu Rau to become its permanent chief executive, today continued its own transition to a more software-centric company.
The company announced it was licensing APRICO content-recommendation source code and other intellectual property rights from Royal Philips Electronics.
The deal will allow SeaChange to offer what has become a more important aspect of multi-screen video delivery, personalized, content-aware and collaborative recommendation functionality.
SeaChange will integrate the APRICO source code into its Adrenalin multiscreen video back-office platform, allowing service providers to improve their buy rates and increase revenue per user.
"Viewers today are confronted with hundreds of channels, thousands of on-demand movies and countless videos available through their TVs, PCs and mobile devices," said Erwin van Dommelen, SeaChange's president of software. "Finding interesting content has become a real issue, with digital TV subscribers often spending at least 25 percent of their viewing time browsing content catalogs or hopping channels."
APRICO finds, recommends and delivers personalized content from linear broadcast material, video-on-demand and web video to viewers via TV, PC or mobile device, based on their profile, viewing behavior and/or explicit inputs.
SeaChange said that gives service providers a better shot at retaining viewers and maximizing revenues.
SeaChange CEO Rau, in March, said the Acton, Mass.-based company would aggressively spin-off or divest of non-software businesses as it worked to morph into a pure software play. This deal, he said, works toward that goal.
"The acquisition of these intellectual property rights is part of SeaChange's strategy to grow revenues through targeted investments and expansion into adjacent products," he said.
The APRICO technology will be released over the course of 2012.
For more:
- see this release
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