Amino Communications, the Cambridge start-up specialising in TV
over Internet protocol (IPTV), can now attract tier one customers
following its initial public offering (IPO) in June and is about to
do a big deal in Japan.
"We're chuffed as buttons," Bob Giddy, managing director of Amino,
told
Electronics Weekly. "Before the IPO, customers
thought we were clever but fragile - our financial position was a
barrier to us engaging with tier one customers. Now we've got over
£10m in the bank which gives us credibility when engaging with
the big corporates."
That's a substantial turnaround. "Between 1997 (when Amino was
founded) and 2003, we were burning cash with huge debts," said
Giddy. "We turned a profit in December 2003 and in Q1 2004 had
£4m turnover with a healthy profit."
Amino has 312 worldwide deployments of its IPTV gateways. "We'd
prefer to call them gateways although, because they sit next to the
TV, we have to call them set-top boxes," said Giddy.
Amino's biggest deployment is with Hong Kong Broadband Network
which has taken 40,000 boxes, and telcos are rolling out IPTV using
Amino boxes in Sweden, Cyprus and Slovenia. "We are about to do
some really big business in Japan," said Giddy.
The company has 17 volume deployments (over 1,000 boxes a month)
in North America. Small US telcos are a potential source of revenue
as well. "There are 1,100 regional telcos in the US averaging
50,000 subscribers each," said Giddy. "The small guys are the early
adopters - they're the innovators."
Giddy joined Amino in 2001 to do licensing deals for its
technology. 2001 was not a good time to sell licences, so Amino
designed a product, manufactured it in China and is selling it
worldwide.
"It's real engineering, real selling and no politics," said
Giddy.