TiVo Buying Digitalsmiths for $135M in Cash, Looks to the Cloud
Despite competition from low-cost set-top boxes, TiVo has been making some impressive moves, the latest of which is the acquisition of video metadata company Digitalsmiths. TiVo will pay $135 million in cash for the company, and expects the deal to close in the first quarter of Fiscal 2015.
The purchase shows that TiVo is thinking beyond the box and has plans to grow into a cloud-based service, where it sees significant expansion possibilities. Digitalsmith metadata powers search and recommendation tools for personalized content discovery.
TiVo will use Digitalsmiths' intellectual property to create new cloud-based commercial services, says TiVo CEO and president Tom Rogers, which work both with and without TiVo's successful user interface. Just as valuable is Digitalsmiths' relationship with seven of the top ten U.S. pay TV providers and many tier one service providers. Through its relationships, Digitalsmiths recommendations can reach 64 percent of the country, he notes. Its metadata is used on Roku, Xbox, PlayStation, Kindle, iOS, and Android devices.
Digitalsmiths has been on a growth streak, handling nearly 150 million transactions in December, 2013, up from 90 million in July, 2013.
TiVo also announced that it has increased its stock repurchase authorization by $100 million, and will repurchase $100 million in the first quarter of Fiscal 2015.
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