If you had one guess as to the occupation of a man with a bachelor’s degree in Cybernetics and a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, what would you say? My gut would be that he is creating the next wave of robotic technology that will one day turn into the Terminator.
However, Michael Pritchard, with the help of his partner Jules Weiss, decided to spare Earth the arid, sci-fi landscape and create Yetio instead.
Yetio was designed to make streaming videos to mobile apps easy. The platform handles everything including high-quality adaptive streaming, encoding, in-app purchasing, a drop-in SDK and player, flexible APIs, global CDN, and top-notch security.
However, the field they are probing is not a new one, and Yetio has been in Beta for a long time. After some thoughtful examination of the competition, there seems to be one question that arises: can Yetio stand toe-to-toe with the big dogs?
The main competitors for Yetio are Brightcove, Kaltura, and Ooyala. These three all offer video streaming just like Yetio. But, unlike Yetio, they have a large amount of traction already underfoot.
Brightcove has cultivated Macy’s, Ticketmaster, The New York Times, Showtime, GM, Staples, and Puma as some of its major clients.
Kaltura has signed HBO, TMZ, Accenture, and Zappos to their list.
Ooyala features Cabela’s, ESPN, The North Face, Men’s Journal, Dell, Rolling Stone, American Express, and the Smithsonian Institution on their resume.
This is only a portion of their client portfolios, and they have some OTHER power hitters stashed on their bench. Additionally, these three services offer more in the way of video streaming capabilities through their engines.
But Yetio, not intimidated, holds two key features over their competition: lower cost and in-app purchasing. Yetio requires no monthly fees, and only charges $0.20 per gigabyte of storage. They offer the first 40 gigabytes free of charge.
The in-app purchasing makes it so apps who use Yetio’s services can charge viewers to watch content without making them go outside the app to sign up for payment.
No doubt Pritchard and Weiss are dedicated to making Yetio work, but it will be a steep climb to reach the same level as their competition.