Mativision

Digital Catapult helped Mativision, a market-leading 360° video and immersive content company, to align its product roadmap with the 5G roadmap. The specialist 5G support provided by Digital Catapult has influenced product design, helped Mativision position its solutions for the future, generate new business leads and build its brand awareness in new and existing markets.

Best kept secret Mativision wanted to increase market reach and brand awareness

Mativision has been working in the music industry delivering 360° content and immersive applications for the last 10-15 years, boast an impressive client list and work on a range of high-profile projects. However, it wanted to build on its status as an industry ‘best kept secret’ to become better known and increase its market reach in new sectors, leveraging its platform technology.

Mativision was aware that if it continued to only work with referenced clients all its engagements would be based on the same business model, limiting its potential for growth into different markets.

It was also aware that as emerging technology, 5G has the potential to completely transform content-driven experiences. For smaller companies like Mativision it is difficult to know how to respond to the potential and the challenges that 5G presents. Without inhouse 5G expertise or hiring expensive consultants, smaller companies can struggle to benefit from the development of 5G network technologies.

Mativision was selected for the Future of Training Showcase, Horizon 2020’s 5G-VICTORI and the 5G Smart Tourism project

Digital Catapult has been working with Mativision on a range of initiatives for the last two to three years including its selection to participate in the 5G Testbed Acceleration Programme. Having recognised Mativision’s high potential, Digital Catapult has been providing 5G technical expertise and business support to enable Mativision to harness of power of 5G to innovate even further.

In addition to the 5G Testbed Accelerator Programme, Digital Catapult selected Mativision to be part of its Future of Training Showcase, the Horizon 2020 project and 5G Smart Tourism Project.

Dimitrios Gkounis, 5G Technologist at Digital Catapult said: “We have supported Mativision on experimenting and testing a 5G solution on our testbed. This engagement has provided advantageous findings about performance, enabling Mativision to further develop and prepare for when the new generation of mobile networks becomes widely available.”

Digital Catapult’s Future of Training Showcase was a three-part national showcase with events in London, Belfast and North East Tees Valley, designed to shine a light on six immersive companies creating engaging and innovative content that is revolutionising the way we train. At each event Mativision had the opportunity to demonstrate its 5G-enabled platform solution to industry and academics.

The £5 million 5G Smart Tourism project was funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). It brought together 19 organisations to showcase some of the UK’s leading 5G tech pioneers. This ambitious project took the role of 5G to the next level by demonstrating, using the most advanced network infrastructure at the University of Bristol 5G testbed, through real-life examples, exactly how immersive cultural experiences will benefit from 5G, and how the experience of the ordinary visitor will change with it. Mativision provided an impressive, engaging and exciting simultaneous 360° VR experience of Bristol Pride Day and Harbour Festival events, allowing multiple users to experience shared content in sync, to demonstrate how 5G can overcome current barriers such as delay through latency.

Horizon 2020’s 5G-VICTORI, is a 36-month long project with partners from several European countries. Digital Catapult worked closely with Mativision, helping it to assess the opportunity, identify areas of the project where its technology would be applicable and to streamline the proposed participation. In addition, Digital Catapult supported Mativision in the preparation of a total budget for its participation which was appropriate for the overall project structure and as a result, facilitated the acceptance and integration of Mativision in the consortium.

Digital Catapult’s expertise helped Mativision to understand different markets and business models and develop its steaming platform

As a result of working with Digital Catapult’s experts, Mativision has gained 5G technology expertise, market insight and business skills that are enabling it to scale its business. This has included ways to increase the value it can deliver to its customers and how to communicate its offering in more compelling and accessible ways.

The opportunities that the Future of Training Showcase, Horizon 2020 and the 5G Smart Tourism project presented, have all contributed to growing brand awareness for Mativision across a range of industries.

Digital Catapult has been able to connect Mativision with potential clients and partners. It is currently in discussions with a major telco that is very interested in using the technology Mativision has developed for commercial trials to support its wider deployment of 5G, something that would not have happened without Digital Catapult’s introduction. It is also actively pursuing a potential academic partnership to further develop its products.

Through these engagements Mativision has also benefited from technical expertise it did not have in-house. This has enabled it to develop landmark use cases for its VR streaming platform, exploiting emerging 5G technology, which can sustain higher bit-rates and lower latency than ever previously possible.