On2 Technologies sees revenue rise

On2 Technologies saw its earnings per share increase by 74 percent for the financial quarter that ended Sept. 30. The company says that September was the best operating month in its history.

Revenues for the quarter ended September 30, 2001 were US$498,000, an increase of 72 percent over $290,000 in the same quarter last year and an increase of 408% over $98,000 in the second quarter of 2001. The company’s pro forma net loss for the third quarter of 2001 was $1,647,000, or $0.05 per share, as compared to $5,052,000, or $0.19 per share, in the same quarter last year and $2,989,000, or $0.10 per share, for the second quarter of 2001.

This represents a decrease in loss per share of 74 percent and 50 percent, respectively. Revenues for the nine months ended Sept. 30 were $1,302,000, an increase of 110 percent over $619,000 for the same period last year.

Meanwhile, On2 has made its source code and open source license for their VP3.2 video compression algorithm available online.

“This is the first step in On2’s attempt to see VP3 proliferate as a common format for the interchange of encoded digital video,” Dan Miller, On2 Technologies Founder and chief technology officer, said in announcing the open source move. “Our initial announcement was widely embraced by the development community, and now we look forward to breaking from the litany of incompatible formats and standards.”

On2.com says that VP3 offers TV-quality video compression and streaming capabilities with support for multiple bit rates within a single file. The company supports RealPlayer and Windows Media Player, in addition to QuickTime. The VP3 plug-in for QuickTime is currently available in beta form, and can be downloaded from On2.com’s Web site.

On2.com is also working on a VP4 codec, which the company claims provides Internet users with “near-DVD quality” streaming video at 450Kbps, a 10-15 percent reduction over any other compression technology available today.