Wipro acquires Nokia’s mobile TV software unit

Wipro Technologies has acquired Nokia’s six-year-old service management solution for mobile television for an undisclosed sum.

The solution, the first one in the world when Nokia developed it, sits on end-user devices such as mobile phones and will make the Indian company a big player in the mobile TV solutions business.

A Wipro official said the company will go after global markets like Italy, which has seen DVB-H based mobile TV deployments.

“Digital technology has taken off, spurring demand for devices with digital transmission,” he said, pointing out that the technology is not restricted to mobile phones only.

“This acquisition will help us provide middleware for device manufacturers such as mobile handsets and set-top boxes for digital transmission,” he pointed out, adding that the finer details are still being negotiated.

Mobile TV has been a subject of much expectations and hype.

Two years ago, consultant Frost & Sullivan predicted that the market for DVB-H-based systems alone will zoom from $60 million in 2006 to over $2 billion by 2010, mainly comprised subscription fees.

The rollout, however, has been far more limited that expected, partly due to regulatory factors.

The market is currently restricted mainly to European countries such as Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and Hungary, with total subscribers in the millions.

However, though Nokia had predicted two years ago that most of its mid and high end handsets will soon start sporting DVB-H capability, as of now, only three models —- N93, N96 and N77 can receive the signals.

The unit that is being sold to Wipro designs the ‘middleware’ or software that has to be loaded on the phone and other devices to process the DVB-H signal.

Besides the lack of traction for DVB-H, analysts pointed out that the move is to be seen as an attempt by Nokia to focus on its core strength as a device maker and a service provider.

It had recently turned the Symbian operating system, which runs most of its high-end phones, into an open-source project. A Nokia spokesperson said Wipro was chosen due to the company’s association with the product.

“Wipro has been the key development partner since the development of the MBS business began some six years ago,” said Nokia spokesperson Arja Suominen, “They were a natural candidate to take over the MBS business.”

With the acquisition, Wipro will take over around 40 employees of Nokia in Singapore and Singapore. The financial details of the transaction were not revealed, not were any estimates of the revenues available.

However, Suominen said Wipro has agreed to retain sister company and infrastructure maker Nokia Siemens Networks as a preferred supplier for the MBS platform. Currently, NSN is Nokia’s preferred supplier of many of the equipment used to set up mobile TV networks.

However, unlike Nokia, Wipro can essentially go to market with non-Nokia devices, such as third party set-top-boxes and plug-and-play receivers for laptops, expanding the addressible market for the product. The market is non-existent in India due to regulatory restrictions on mobile TV.