Context
In 2011, Belgacom, Société Régionale d'Investissement de Wallonie (SRIW), Société Régionale d'Investissement de Bruxelles (SRIB) and Participatie Maatschappij Vlaanderen (PMV) concluded an agreement with the aim of investing €20 million to support and accelerate the growth of companies active in the domain of new digital applications. Belgacom will provide €10 million of the total investment, with the balance being provided by the three regional investment companies.
Investment areas
The agreement seeks to support the growth of young companies in the following six ICT areas:
- E-health: any activity linked to electronic/ICT aspects in the field of healthcare such as telemedicine, electronic medical prescriptions, remote diagnosis and treatment, remote medical monitoring, electronic medical files, etc.
- Mobility: any technology that enables solutions to be found in terms of mobility of goods and people: tolls, parking, payment of fines, traffic management, navigation, information on public transport, etc.
- Mobile applications: any application using the mobile network infrastructure: mobile data applications, logistics, mobile media usage, etc.
- Image and entertainment technologies: any image technology or technology linked to entertainment/games, such as 3D applications, interactive online games, interactive applications on TV, video communications, etc.
- Intelligent energy networks and their management: any technology enabling optimal and bidirectional management of energy networks (intelligent counters, energy management systems, etc.) and remote control of local production units (e.g. solar panels) and energy consumption (recharging of electric cars, etc.).
- "Cloud" services: applications or services which are provided via remote infrastructures and which were traditionally provided via local infrastructures at the end user's side. The remote applications and services can be intended for either business or residential customers and can come in different variants such as infrastructure (IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service), operating systems (PaaS - Platform as a Service), or applications (SaaS - Software as a Service). It involves, for example, remote data management and sharing, communication and entertainment applications, etc.
Examples of investments made
In September 2010, Belgacom and SRIW (through their subsidiary SRIW Techno) invested in the capital of Softkinetic, which has an international and unique expertise in the field of 3D gesture recognition technologies. The company enables its customers to manage and control applications, equipment and graphical interfaces through the use of simple human movements. This approach could be applied to a wide range of Belgacom Entertainment content, from video games to online learning applications.
Michel Tombrof and André Miodezky, co-CEO of Softkinetic, comment: "Our ambition is to make our mark in the world of 3D gesture recognition, a revolutionary technology similar to the tactile interfaces featured on smartphones and tablets. We are honored that Belgacom has asked Softkinetic to develop innovative entertainment products and services. Belgacom's investment will enable us to further accelerate our strategy and offer advanced 3D technologies in the electronic consumer market on a global scale."