Spikes in OTT Viewing Will ‘Outlive the Pandemic,’ Says Akamai CEO
Many over-the-top video offerings are “seeing substantial success” during the pandemic, said Akamai CEO Tom Leighton on a Q3 call Tuesday evening. “Some are doing better than others, but I do think OTT is here to stay.” As people view…
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more content online, “that becomes more of the pattern and that will outlive the pandemic,” he said. “We'd all like to get back to a world when you can go out and see a movie,” but that’s not likely to happen “anytime soon,” he said. Akamai’s Asavie buy, announced Tuesday, will “complement” its security product lines with a “cellular-specific” security offering, “an important step in our strategy to capture the emerging opportunity in 5G,” said Leighton. “Deployment of 5G and IoT applications can provide significant opportunities for Akamai.” The impact of 5G on innovation will be “similar to the way broadband enabled new social networking apps that few could have imagined before,” he said. “As 5G networks come online, we believe that end users and connected devices will demand faster performance and greater scale than cloud data centers can provide.” The stock closed 8.7% lower Wednesday at $97.40.