ANTIK Technology, a Košice-based company, in April launched production at its Chinese facility of a new hybrid set-top box for interactive television. The technology was originally developed in Slovakia, according to information provided by the company’s director general, Igor Kolla, to the Hospodárske Noviny daily.
Antik presented its electronic set-top box, Juice Lite, only recently at the international NAB Show 2010 in Las Vegas, according to www.zive.sk. The set-top box enables parallel viewing of TV broadcast via the internet as well as via digital terrestrial and cable broadcasting.
According to the show’s website, Juice Lite is an IPTV receiver designed for IPTV broadcasters, hotels, schools, hospitals and others. It enables TV broadcasts and video to be played in HD quality, and also via low-speed networks. Juice Lite was developed not just for IP television, but also to work as a home media centre, enabling users to watch videos, view photos and listen to music.
The set-top box is not the only device Antik manufactures in China. Its portfolio of products includes VoIP telephones, VoIP gates, as well as internet routers, Trend magazine, a financial weekly, reported. It also produces satellite GPS vehicle tracking devices in China which it particularly wants to supply to eastern European markets.
The company has been outsourcing its mass production to China since 2006. Production lines are located in the southern province of Canton and Antik has 2,000 employees in that region, the SITA newswire wrote.
Kolla's company first went to China six years ago.
“It was because of the price,” Kolla told the Hospodárske Noviny. “We needed multilevel printed circuits, which nobody in Slovakia was able to produce. And in Austria these were awfully expensive.”
First he launched a company in Malaysia and later he outsourced production directly to China. Kolla spends half the year in China where he supervises production in the plant. Of the non-cost advantages of moving production to China he highlighted the willingness of the Chinese people to work, according to Trend weekly. He does not see a problem with the quality of production, saying that the Chinese workers exceed the quality of production in Slovakia when they have proper management.
Antik Technology is a joint venture of the Slovakia-based Antik Computers & Communications corporation and a Czech company, Wolf Hill. It is devoted to long-term research and production of electronics. The majority of its 130 employees are working as part of the R & D team located in Slovakia.
Antik was founded in 1999 and was originally devoted to the development of telecommunication equipment. It operates a fibre optic telecommunications network in Košice and its proximity. For the past few years Antik has been focusing mostly on the area of IPTV and at this time its top priority is the development of its own hardware and middleware for set-top boxes.
