On Demand Group disclosed that its expansion strategy has led to the creation of a TV transactional video-on-demand service offering designed for French-speaking markets. Further, the Company stated that it has already secured its first multiyear contract to provide end-to-end content management for a leading multiplatform telco video service provider.
While details of this first rollout and major new content distribution deals secured for the market are anticipated to be disclosed later this year, On Demand Group’s London content factory is already processing and delivering movies and promotions for French subscribers. Overall, the service is expected to reach more than two million homes with blockbusters and classic library titles, all on-demand with full DVD-like functionality to pause, rewind and fast-forward whenever subscribers want.
On Demand Group’s new French specialization supplies to one the world's most advanced VOD markets. According to Screen Digest research, two-thirds of French TV homes are VOD enabled, largely represented by IPTV-based offerings reaching nearly 40% of homes.
On Demand Group acquires, produces, prepares and delivers annually 250,000 movies, TV programmes and promotions to 12 video service provider platforms, covering 10 million on-demand enabled homes and 100 million mobile subscribers in six languages including Arabic, English, French, German, Greek and Turkish.
On Demand Group’s very first service provider collaboration, with Virgin Media, is widely known as contributing to one of the world’s most successful VOD services, recently reporting 750 million subscriber views during 2009 alone. For German speaking markets, On Demand Group created the joint venture On Demand Deutschland, which now serves Kabel BW, Unity Media, Kabel Deutschland, and Telekom Austria. The Company has also launched specialized services for the Greek national telco, OTE, in Greece and for TTNet, the ISP owned by Turk Telekom in Turkey. Elsewhere, On Demand Group has set roots for the Middle East with the creation of a Dubai-based team and operates VOD services for du, the fast growing Dubai-based telco.