Coding Technologies GmbH
Fraunhofer Venture
Coding Technologies' Digital Revolution
With the acquisition through Dolby Laboratories, the success story of Coding Technologies has come full circle. Early in 2008, Dolby bought the German-Swedish company for more than 250 million US dollars to extend its technology portfolio and know how for applications in digital broadcasting, for mobile communications, and the internet. Before, Coding Technologies with participation of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft had developed into the worldwide leading provider of audio compression solutions in their technology sector within approximately five years.
In 1997, the inventor Lars Liljeryd founded Coding Technologies AB in Sweden. One year later, first contact was established between Lars Liljeryd and Martin Dietz, then head of the audio division of the Fraunhofer-Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen, which had already developed the MP3 as well as the AAC compression technology, which was highly topical then. The synergies between the first promising developments of the young company and the existing technologies of Fraunhofer IIS soon became obvious. Together, the idea took shape to develop a new audio codec for digital radio, among others for digital long-wave, medium-wave, and short-wave radio within the scope of the Digital Radio Mondiale Konsortium (DRM).
The cooperation between the Fraunhofer IIS experts and Coding Technologies showed enormous technical and economic potential. To be able to use this potential to the maximum and open up new sales markets, those involved intensified their cooperation and founded Coding Technologies GmbH in September 2000, the German branch of the Swedish parent company.
Only a few months after the foundation of the German branch in Nuremberg, the experts of Coding Technologies released mp3PRO, an extended version of the MP3 standard. The developments of Coding Technologies find markets worldwide for mobile phones, digital radio and television, the internet and music industry. The internationally much awarded and at present most successful technology of the company, aacPlus, is an integral component of a lot of mobile phones. Coding Technologies products are basic components of XM Satellite Radio, Digital Radio Mondiale, DVB, DMB, HD-DVD, and many other systems and standards. In the spring of 2006, the company again caused a sensation with the first MPEG-4 aacPlus/DTS coding system for digital multi-channel transmissions worldwide.
It was Coding Technologies' innovation that induced Dolby to acquire the company for more than 250 million US dollars. "By adding Coding Technologies' expertise and high-efficiency audio compression to our portfolio of technologies and services, we will be better positioned to support our customers as they continue to move into more bandwidth-constrained delivery methods", said Dolby Laboratories President and CEO Bill Jasper. The German-Swedish company has merged into the Dolby group by 100%.
Set Bookmark