When Akimbo first emerged, it filled a gap that was to us quite obvious, it was a DVR device which didn’t anticipate that programming would arrive over the airways or through a cable or a satellite, but instead it would come from secure locations around the internet. It couldn’t just download YouTube, but back then, around 2004, there was no YouTube anyway.
Initially it was Akimbo that was the only secure provider with a route straight to the customer set top, but this week it opened its strategy to supplying these tools for major content providers to manage the process themselves.
We presume that all the Akimbos out there can access the new system but it looks to us like this is a PC targeted system and anyway it works with a browser, and as far as we can see insists that the browser is Internet Explorer from Microsoft, perhaps because the system uses the Microsoft Windows Media DRM.
What will have partially sunk Akimbo, is that products like Apple TV are now doing much of what the specialized $250 set top used to do. So now it sells its web-based Library Distribution Management system, which manages content and distribution rights, pricing, and which looks after advertising rotation. The content owner’s web site shows a program guide using the Akimbo Consumer Program Guide, and a download manager at the client end takes care of the encrypted content once it’s downloaded and allows for it to play while not connected to the internet.
At the back end of the web site is a Content Publishing System for putting content up there in the first place.
The system supports advertising and multiple business models including transactional, subscription, download-to-own, download-to-burn, pay-per-minute, gift cards and account credits.
Thomas Frank, CEO, Akimbo said , ‘One of the most important pieces missing in the stampede to the Internet video market has been an easy solution for content owners to control the marketing and sale of their own video assets.”
The problem with this is that it runs head on against the Adobe management systems and tools for running Flash video, now the most popular format on the internet, so we think that Akimbo has missed the boat once more.
Akimbo has just raised a further $8 million, from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, and Zone Ventures, which takes its total VC funding to $56 million.