Synacor, which is a TV Everywhere and Web portal vendor, announced this morning it had bought Android development company Teknision for an undisclosed sum.
The addition of Ottawa-based Teknision will allow Synacor to branch out into the mobile arena while adding an Android-based platform for developers and users. Synacor said the deal to buy Teknision brought it one step close to its goal “of consumers accessing all media from one place, on any device.”
Synacor can now offer device manufacturers a customizable platform as a service (PaaS) that facilitates personalized and curated online experiences for end-users
“The Teknision acquisition is exciting on many fronts. Consumers soon will need one-stop access to all media—a home screen. To that end, we are advancing the presence of our cable, satellite, wireless carrier and consumer electronics customers on a wide range of devices, and all providing their consumers a single point of access. With Teknision’s platform, Synacor is able to build upon our HTML5 expertise and pursue the exploding mobile device market opportunity,” said Synacor CEO Ron Frankel. “I believe Android will become the platform of choice for many CE manufacturers on devices relevant to MVPDs, including smartphones, tablets and televisions. By creating cutting-edge experiences for connected screens—from today’s tablet to tomorrow’s Android TV—Teknision’s development platform is important to Synacor’s strategy.
“This acquisition strengthens our ability to guide consumers to their media automatically, on their devices of choice.”
Android has emerged as one of the leading platforms for major mobile and consumer electronics players, with a reported 1 billion Android activations to date, primarily due to its highly customizable and open framework. Synacor said it was capitalizing on Android’s popularity and the potential it provides for end-users who want dynamic, custom consumer touch points such as launchers, widgets and lock screens to access their favorite TV shows, movies, apps, services and tools.
“Uniting with Synacor makes perfect sense for Teknision. We’ve never before had so much reach and so many resources to advance our platform and apps as far as they can go,” said Gabor Vida, president of Teknision. “We’re known for beautiful and award-winning products and are positioned to vault to the next level. Synacor’s expertise, capital and extensive engineering teams, as well as its expansive customer base, elevates Teknision to new heights in innovation and rapid advancements in homes screens, launchers, apps and widgets on Android devices.”
Teknision’s customer list includes Canon, Panasonic, Adobe, Intel and Walmart. Recently Turkcell, which is Turkey’s largest wireless carrier with more than 35 million subscribers, used Tekinision’s Android platform to add features to its flagship smartphone.
Synacor’s roster of cable operator customers includes Metrocast Communications, BendBroadband WOW, Buckeye CableSystem, Cable One, Charter Communications, Mediacom Communications and Suddenlink.
Late last month, Synacor launched launch an in-home white label auto authentication platform for TV Everywhere services.
