Barco has acquired Taiwan-based AWIND, makers of the WePresent product line that reviewed well in AV News in December 2012. Our conclusion was that WePresent’s value for money capabilities posed a real problem for ClickShare – a view that Barco obviously shared. Naturally they don’t quite justify the acquisition on those terms, saying that the takeover enhances “Barco’s strategy of leveraging its strengths in visualisation to establish a leadership position in professional networking and collaboration.”
AWIND, established in 2003, possesses an intellectual property portfolio including 28 patents covering plug-and-show techniques, conference control, universal multi-touch, dual way interactivity and screen activity analysis and encoding. The company’s product portfolio includes WePresent and MirrorOP. These are professional wireless presentation solutions that both serve the markets for meeting rooms and education. To date, AWIND has installed its wireless content sharing solutions on more than 500,000 screens worldwide.
Eric Van Zele, president and CEO of Barco said: “The acquisition of AWIND perfectly fits within Barco’s strategy of broadening the company’s market position beyond visualisation to include networking and collaboration, strengthening the company’s existing collaboration capabilities.”
“AWIND has established a first-class reputation as a leader in wireless interactivity solutions for corporate AV and educational markets. By joining forces with AWIND, we are gaining important collaboration know-how, enhancing ClickShare’s functionality and opening the door to a number of markets we do not fully address today, notably education and corporate meeting rooms.”
