Samsung Launches Acquisition of Smart TV Peripheral Technology and Patents

U.S. technology blog Venturebeat reported in mid-June that streaming media device provider Boxee will have recently announced the acquisition but it is not clear who the buyer is.

Now, Samsung has admitted that they bought Boxee. Samsung did not disclose the price. However, according to the Israeli website The Maker, the purchase price is 30 million US dollars.

Boxee is headquartered in New York, but a large part of the team is in Israel.

Boxee was founded in 2007 as a website that integrates web video. In November last year, the company released a TV box similar to Apple TV.

The set-top box features a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) feature and is priced at $99. The biggest feature of this product is that users can use Boxee's cloud service to store recorded TV programs in the Boxee server. After users record TV programs and store them on the Boxee server, they can not only play these programs on Boxee TV, but also play on user laptops, iPads, iPhones, Android phones and other mobile devices. The monthly fee for using the Boxee cloud storage service is $15.

The new Boxee TV is a transformation of Boxee's progress. It has cancelled hundreds of old-fashioned Boxee applications and replaced them with current streaming video services in the US market, including Pandora, Spotify, Netflix, VUDU, The Wall Street Journal, and Cloudee.

However, this transformational product does not seem to have formed a decisive point in the market. The company had previously spent 26.5 million U.S. dollars. It was said that it was still looking for new financing of 30 million U.S. dollars before it was heard of the acquisition. However, it seems very difficult, and even to the sales information it releases, there are not many buyers who are interested in buying.

Samsung's "coming out" is a way out for this company. Of course, Samsung is not a good thing. It is making an effort to create a seamless entertainment experience between mobile devices and Samsung TV. To this end, it launched multiple acquisitions of patented technologies such as peripheral software services. For example, in May, Samsung announced the acquisition of mobile and smart TV application development company MOVL. The company had developed Wedraw, a product that can interact with mobile and TV.

The acquisition of Boxee should strengthen Samsung's smart TV cloud storage technology.