Hantro Products
Video compression and codec solutions for mobile devices.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | €0.0 | round | |
$7.3m | Series B | ||
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
Hantro Products Oy was a Finnish company that specialized in providing video compression technology for mobile and handheld devices. The company developed and licensed both hardware intellectual property (IP) and software solutions for various video standards, including MPEG-4, H.263, and H.264/AVC. Its product portfolio was designed to enable applications such as video capture, playback, messaging, streaming, and telephony on mobile platforms. The firm's business model targeted silicon providers, device manufacturers, and network operators. Hantro's customers included major industry players like Nokia, Freescale, and LSI.
Founded in Oulu, Finland, Hantro established itself as a key provider in the wireless video IP market. In 2005, the company, led by founder and CEO Eero Kaikkonen, secured an additional €4 million in funding from existing investors including CapMan and Nexit Ventures to strengthen its market position. By 2007, its technology had been implemented in over 200 million devices. In May 2007, Hantro was acquired by On2 Technologies, a U.S.-based leader in video compression, in a deal valued at approximately $58.4 million. This acquisition made Hantro a wholly-owned subsidiary, combining its mobile hardware expertise with On2's software codec portfolio. The strategic combination was intended to deliver high-quality video across a wide range of applications and devices, from web and VoIP to mobile phones.
The story continued when Google acquired On2 Technologies in February 2010. This acquisition was driven by Google's goal to make high-quality video compression a standard part of the web platform, and Hantro's mobile video technology was a significant component of the deal. Hantro's hardware designs, known for enabling high-definition video playback with low power consumption, were integrated into chipsets for a variety of multimedia devices. The technology was ultimately crucial in the development of Google's open-source video format, WebM.
Keywords: video compression, mobile video technology, hardware IP, software codecs, MPEG-4, H.264, semiconductor IP, video solutions, On2 Technologies, Google acquisition, video streaming, video telephony, video messaging, mobile multimedia, video encoding, video decoding, handheld devices, silicon providers, video applications, Eero Kaikkonen