Starting as a closed-network IPTV CA provider, Widevine is one of the more widely established vendors of security for telco TV. However, Widevine has not managed to secure tier 1 deals within a growing pay TV market; consistently behind competitors such as Cascade, Verimatrix and Viaccess as the market emerged, Widevine has since been eclipsed by Microsoft, Motorola and NDS. With Microsoft, Motorola, NDS and Verimatrix all expected to see between 55 and 90 per cent growth to 2014 the gulf is increasing as smaller vendors such as Cascade, Celrun, Viaccess and Widevine see IPTV growth outside of major tier 1 deployments.

However, Widevine has slowly but surely built presence within the multi-device security ecosystem for pay TV operators extending services off-network, and for pure over-the-top providers. In this capacity Widevine is being enabled either direct in-box or as part of an application download. This strategy has extended the reach of Widevine technology to a reported 250m devices and includes notable customers such as AT&T, Boxee, Dish (via Sling), Lovefilm and Netflix, and major deals with consumer electronics firms LG, Sony, Samsung, Toshiba and Vizio.

Google's purchase of Widevine offers several opportunities. Firstly, it will allow competition with Apple and Microsoft, both of whom offer comprehensive DRM with Fairplay and Play Ready / Windows DRM respectively. This will be important for getting more premium content on Google platforms, be it Google TV or Youtube, both of which have struggled with creating a pay wall around premium content offered through an online portal. In particular, Youtube may leverage fingerprinting and watermarking technology to rapidly identify content illegally posted. Google TV may also benefit from Widevine's previous relationships with hardware providers, which will help extend the reach of the platform to new devices. Finally, adaptive bitrate streaming will enable Google to cue up content distribution on multiple devices, perhaps via Android, and better match the image stream to the available bandwidth. All of these are likely to be hugely important as Google vie for a permanent space in the livingroom.