Amino Technologies - Results For The Year Ended 30 November 2006

Amino Technologies plc (‘Amino’; stock code: AMO), the Cambridge based broadband network software and systems company, announces its unaudited final results for the year ended 30 November 2006.

The IPTV market environment

A review of the many IPTV market surveys now available confirms our understanding that, whilst there are differences in view on the absolute size of the IPTV market, all analysts agree that there is a sustained, upward trend that continues to strengthen and develop.

In 2006, the driving force continued to be from the smaller, more dynamic tier 3 telcos which had already adopted the proven and robust MPEG-2 technologies or from emerging territories that were not constrained by network legacy issues and were willing to become MPEG-4 ‘early adopters’. As the new MPEG-4 technologies become available and are proven to be robust, this will herald the entry of the larger tier 2 and ultimately the tier 1 telco’s.

The transition to MPEG-4 creates a great deal of churn; it provides the window of opportunity for a second wave of technology providers. Some of these new entrants provide Amino with an opportunity to develop new customers or strengthen our already strong ‘Partner Profiles’; others present new and competitive challenges. Either way, this new activity serves to underscore our long held view that IPTV remains an emerging but valuable market. The transition to MPEG-4 has been a challenge for the entire industry, top to bottom, from the semiconductors to encoders. As a provider of a key element within the ‘IPTV ecosystem’, we recognise the benefits offered by MPEG-4 but will remain cautious until the end-to-end solutions are thoroughly tested.

2006 also witnessed the entrance of Microsoft TV (‘MSTV’). Much has been written about MSTV, but it is significant that even Microsoft has acknowledged that it is the television and not the PC that will be at the centre of the consumers’ home network – a view that has been championed constantly by Amino.

Geographically, the market has been established by the emerging economies in the Pacific Rim, Russia and Eastern Europe. It is important to note that some of the key elements (middleware, browsers, etc.) that are needed to form a complete IPTV solution have emerged from these regions. Together with the smaller independent telco’s in North America, the customers in these regions have pioneered IPTV and Amino is well positioned with them as both supplier and/or technology-partner. Joining the established businesses, powerful organisations in both China and India have announced detailed plans to offer IPTV services in conjunction with Amino.

Amino’s market position

ABI Research, a leading US-based market analyst, accredited Amino with maintaining its market leadership position during 2006. It is worth noting that by the end of FY 2006, just 3 years after our first volume shipment, Amino has shipped more than 900,000 IPTV set top boxes throughout the world. ABI estimated that during 2006 the total shipment of IPTV set top boxes was 4.7m of which Amino shipped 413,000.

Amino achievements

Amino has always emphasised that in a typical IPTV deployment, it is our suite of set-top box technologies, (hardware, IntAct operating system and, where appropriate, our soft-codec technologies) that provide the point of convergence for many third party software solutions needed to form a typical ‘IPTV ecosystem’.

Our integrated business model (hardware, software and services) also recorded some notable successes, most recently Time Broadband in India, during the year under review:

• Nov 06 – Amino licenses IPTV solution to Acer’s subsidiary WNC in Taiwan. WNC to bundle IntAct™ software stack soft codec technology with a range of IPTV STBs as part of an offering to IPTV operators across the Asia-Pacific region and to particular tier 1 Telco’s in the European Union and North America.
• Nov 06 – Partnership to Build IP STBs with Chengdu USEE. Entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Chengdu USEE Digital Technology Co. Ltd., a broadband multimedia company based in the People’s Republic of China.
• Nov 06 – Amino announces multi-year set-top box agreement with SES AMERICOM. Largest satellite service provider in the US.
• Sep 06 – Amino launches AmiNET125. New multi-codec IPTV – Internet TV platform with a Microsoft Windows Media-9 (WM9) software configuration.
• Aug 06 – Amino selected for first ever Croatian IPTV deployment by Vodatel.
• July 06 – Amino selected for Northern Europe’s first HD IPTV service – selected by Lijbrandt Telecom BV to supply its STBs for the first ever High Definition IPTV service in Northern Europe. The service was rolled out in time for World Cup football matches offering viewers greater clarity and detail.
• May 06 – Amino wins North American Broadcasters (NAB) Award for Innovation in Media. Amino was the only set-top box vendor selected for this award in the Content Delivery category.
• Dec 05 – Amino enables Portugal’s first ever IPTV service. Selected by Novis, a major Portuguese Telco, for a residential service to be branded as ‘Clix Smartv’.