Rovi Selling DivX and MainConcept, Focusing on Search
Digital entertainment company Rovi is slimming down and focusing on its core business: entertainment discovery. That's why the company announced it's selling its DivX and MainConcept businesses. Parallax Capital Partners and StepStone Group are the new owners, paying up to $75 million in cash and possible future payments if certain milestones are met. The deal closed earlier this week.
Parallax is a private equity firm with a history of buying and running application software companies. It snapped up over 20 companies since 1999. StepStone is an independent private equity asset management company. It oversees over $60 billion in private equity allocations.
"DivX has an established leadership position in the digital video market place widely recognized for their expertise and innovation driven by a strong management and delivery team," noted James Hale, managing partner for Parallax. "We are excited to help author the company's next chapter as a premier supplier of innovative answers for content providers, OTT (over-the-top) delivery, service providers, multi-screen 4K/Ultra HD playback, live IP based content delivery, and more."
Having a strong group of investment partners will let DivX create more seamless video experiences in the future, added Dr. Kanaan Jemili, CEO of DivX.
DivX has over 200 million users worldwide and is used for video playback on over 1 billion devices. DivX introduced an end-to-end HEVC solution last year.
In December, 2010, Rovi bought Sonic Solutions, which owned DivX, for $720 milion in cash and stock. Prior to that, in June of the same year, Sonic had purchased DivX for $323 million.
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