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Technology Stocks : C-Cube -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stoctrash who wrote (45757)	10/4/1999 5:27:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

C-Cube customers from France and the UK invade the US digital video market....................... cableworld.com Digital TV Market Attracts Europeans to U.S. By Karen Brown Two European companies have moved towards establishing American office beachheads to battle their way into the growing U.S. digital television market. CANAL+ U.S. Technologies, a technology arm of the European pay-TV giant, has set up permanent headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., and a satellite office in New York City. The offices will coordinate marketing of MediaHighway, CANAL+'s broadband interactive television middleware and MediaGuard, a conditional access system. Middleware acts as a bridge between the system hardware and the operating system to manage applications such as high-speed Internet access, interactive advertising, e-commerce, electronic program guides, pay-per-view and enhanced program information. CANAL+ first developed the systems for its own cable operations in Europe, and later began marketing it to other MSOs. So far, CANAL+ has carved out 65% of the digital middleware market in Europe. Its programs are licensed to set-top box manufacturers including Philips Electronics, Samsung Corp., Sony Corp. and Toshiba, with deployment in 3 million digital set-top boxes worldwide. CANAL+ U.S. Technologies CEO Jean-Marc Racine said the move comes at a time when the market for middleware is taking off. He pointed out the Java-based products are also in step with open-cable certification now underway at CableLabs Inc. "It seems that there is really a strong opportunity for the cable industry for this kind of open-cable system," he said. "To take advantage of that we decided to open offices in the U.S." Earlier this year, CANAL+ landed a deal with MediaOne Group to deploy MediaGuard and MediaHighway, and Racine said the company is working on similar agreements. Meanwhile, European set-top box maker Pace Micro Technology plc, which announced its plans to stage a full invasion of American markets at the June NCTA convention in Chicago, has moved its North and South American offices to Boca Raton, Fla. The Yorkshire, England-based company, which last year forged its first partnership with Bell South for wireless MMDS boxes, will now field its American engineering, sales, marketing and service division from Boca Raton. Neil Gaydon, who was named president of the Americas operations, said the move was meant to solidify the company's standing worldwide. "The big area where we are not represented is in the U.S.," he said. "Longterm, the goal is to be number one in the world, and to do that we need to get into the U.S. market." Setting up a U.S. office will give the company a domestic base to provide both marketing and technical support for Pace products. Gaydon said the Boca Raton office will have significant input regarding marketing strategies and technical issues as it delves into American cable systems. "This is a U.S. operation we are trying to build here," he said. "We do recognize this is a very different market with very different needs." The recent announcement of the merger between General Instrument Corp. and Motorola Inc. makes that task more challenging, Gaydon concedes. But while the merger may create a more powerful competitor, the marriage between chip maker and box manufacturer may actually strengthen partnership possibilities - in particular attracting rival chips who will no longer be courting GI. And he is quick to point out, Pace already snatched from GI a prize set-top box contract for British cabler Cable and Wireless Communications plc. Pace has forged agreements with Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and BellSouth Entertainment. Gaydon said the company is seeking deals with telcos offering Digital Subscriber Line-based entertainment services and MSOs diving into digital deployments. (October 4, 1999)