Siemens To Acquire Seattle’s Myrio

April 22, 2005
Siemens Communications Inc., a unit of Siemens AG, has acquired Internet protocol television software company Myrio Corp. to increase its presence in the rapidly growing home entertainment market.

Siemens Communications Inc., a unit of Siemens AG, has acquired Internet protocol television software company Myrio Corp. to increase its presence in the rapidly growing home entertainment market.

Myrio, Kirkland, Wash., specializes in middleware and applications for home entertainment solutions. The acquisition means that Siemens will now further enable network service providers to deploy integrated home entertainment solutions as part of a growing set of products and services.

The business centers on new applications for the television, and the expanding interaction with other devices and media types in the home. These include interactive television with options for calling up movies, personal video recording services, online services, and communication applications such as multimedia messaging service, short messaging services and video telephony.

The acquisition of Seattle-based Myrio follows a venture capital investment by Siemens in late 2003. Myrio has 75 employees and serves about 65 global customers.

Siemens said that market analysis estimates the potential market for advanced video services to be more than $25.67 billion by 2006. Chris Coles, president and CEO of Myrio Corp., said the company views the acquisition as the next logical step in building service provider centered applications to leverage their broadband IP networks.

“I expect this will accelerate and expand our product plans, as well as better support our continuing objective of interoperating with the multitude of vendors that typify these networks around the world,” he said.