May 2021

We had a chance to interview Carlos Lucas, CEO of NexStreaming who has been in the company for more than 15 years now.

Hello Carlos

First of all, I have a question. 

What is the difference between NexPlayer and NexStreaming?

C: Well NexPlayer is the product brand name for our software and NexStreaming is the company name.

Tell us a little bit about NexStreaming’s history.

C: So we are a software company focusing only on media player technology. Our mission in the industry is to provide the best player technology. And we have been doing this for almost 20 years so this has been like that from the beginning. In the early years, we were providing our player to device makers, to handset makers like LG and Samsung. They were including our media player in the mobile phones out of the box. Later on, when the application business became a little bit more relevant we moved our player technology into mobile apps. At that time we were solving the strong device fragmentation, so the player capability of the devices was very different from device to device but by moving the player technology to inside the app, the device fragmentation problem was solved. So that’s what we did at that time, in a very innovative way. 

One of our key achievements at the time was also the support of the Apple/iOS streaming protocol on Android devices. They were using different streaming formats so it was needed to support the same streaming format across all devices so that the same content was supported. We were also very innovative with this technology and since then we have been improving our technology and quickly bringing added value to the market. 

What has been the evolution of NexStreaming since that time?

C: First of all, our customers stay with us for many years. Customers like AT&T have been with us since the early years. In that sense, the profile of our customers hasn’t changed much, but the technology itself has been improved a lot with the support of new features and the improvement of video quality. We have extended the number of devices and platforms supported by our player. From those Android and iOS devices, we now support smart TVs and Samsung Tizen, LG WebOS, and also support game consoles, like Xbox and Playstation– so more and more devices so that our customers can provide those video services on more devices. 

And in terms of features?

C: Actually we are upgrading our player capabilities every month. So you can imagine over 20 years how many new things we have created. Most recently, we’ve included multiview and interactivity which are interesting features that the market is receiving very well.

You say that customers stay with NexStreaming for many years, why do you think this is so?

C: First of all, the fact that we are not a pure developer company, but an engineering company is building this trust and strong relationship with our customers. We have our own software code and our own experts in streaming technology. We are much more than just integrators and our customers like this a lot because the profile of our customers is a very high quality service provider demanding the latest features with very good quality across all devices. We take every customer comment very seriously. We take customer support very seriously so that’s why our customers typically stay with us for many years. In fact,  we always say that our customers are our product managers because we take them very seriously and follow their requests in a vigorous way.

What is next for the future of NexPlayer?

C: We believe in new video services, adding interactivity, and working with very important partners in those scenarios. We are also expanding the number of supported platforms and devices, adding more and more devices where our customers can offer their services. We are going to diversify the way that we offer our product. We will diversify the way that we distribute our software online for tier 2 and tier 3 services providers and we will have some surprises in the second half of the year with the new innovations, same as we did in the past supporting HLS and apple format on android, you will see how we are again new movers in the industry. This is what we like. Stay tuned for more surprises and innovations coming from us.