Akimbo Systems

Akimbo Systems
Video-on-demand service to launch

A Silicon Valley startup thinks the field is clear for it to go for its own gold in the video-on-demand business. Akimbo Systems of San Mateo, Calif., plans a $10 a month subscription service offering access to 20,000 hours of video from 50 content providers. The programming will be delivered over a broadband Internet connection and stored on a $229 set-top box, which includes a digital video recorder. Steve Shannon, Akimbo's founder, says TV is the next consumer product to be affected by the Web. "You see it happening with music. You see it happening with phone service," he told the Associated Press. "Twenty years from now, everyone's going to be getting all their video mostly from the Internet." Akimbo will offer independent films, niche interest shows, and foreign language programming. Sean Badding, an industry analyst at the Carmel Group, a market research firm, said that's a smart decision. "They don't want to go head-on with cable operators with mainstream content, because they'll be dead."