Ericsson (ERIC), which already made news last week for rumored talks about acquiring Microsoft’s MediaRoom, is back Wednesday with more: the company said it would be debuting new support services at NAB 2013 aimed at helping broadcasters and content owners manage the evolving TV market environment.
In a release announcing the new service, Ericsson said its newly formed Broadcast Service Division—which it said became viable when it acquired Technicolor’s Broadcast Service division last year–would include outsourced services like media asset management, multi-platform multi-screen delivery, archiving and disaster recovery, allowing broadcasters to “focus on engaging their viewers and delivering the TV experiences that consumers want.”
The deal for Technicolor’s Broadcast Services division, added some 900 new employees to the company, as well as playout operations located in France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands serving several leading broadcasters.
In September, Ericsson landed a five-year deal to manage the playout and media management services for HBO Nordic’s TV content. HBO Nordic, the JV between Time Warner HBO and Persifal International, brings an HBO TV channel to Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.
On the MediaRoom front, meanwhile, in case you missed it (how?), Bloomberg said the deal could wrap up in the next few weeks. Buying MediaRoom would allow Ericsson to offer its service-provider customers a more complete package. The MediaRoom franchise—with AT&T’s U-verse as its bell cow–has been a middling success for Microsoft (MSFT), with sales, according to Raymond James & Associates, hovering near $350 million annually for the past three years, a drop in the bucket for Microsoft, which has bigger businesses to worry about. Competition among set-top box providers has been fierce in the IPTV space, with new technologies—notably cloud offerings—knocking on the door.
