Snell & Wilcox Kahuna recognized by Frost & Sullivan

The outstanding worldwide sales success of the innovative Snell & Wilcox Kahuna SD/HD production switcher is being recognized by Frost & Sullivan with a 2006 Award for Market Penetration Leadership. The prestigious Frost & Sullivan Award is given annually to the company that “has demonstrated strategic excellence in product innovation, marketing, and sales strategies that have resulted in the largest gain in market share over the past 2-3 years.”

Frost & Sullivan selected Snell & Wilcox for the Market Penetration Leadership Award in the production switcher category on the basis of interviews with market participants, end-user studies, and secondary research showing exceptional results for Kahuna in the categories of market share gain, increase in sales, and brand awareness within the industry.

Citing the Kahuna switcher as “one of the most technologically sophisticated products in the market,” the Frost & Sullivan Award presentation describes Kahuna as “a cost effective and reliable solution” that “offers flexibility to broadcasters in a challenging and extremely dynamic environment.”

“The Kahuna production switcher’s outstanding functionality and technical innovations have clearly hit a sweet spot in the global market, enabling Snell & Wilcox to achieve remarkable penetration in a highly competitive market space,” said Mukul Krishna, global manager of the digital media practice at Frost & Sullivan. “Kahuna is the first and only production switcher to simultaneously handle standard- and high-definition within the same production. Our research shows its advanced feature set, combined with Snell & Wilcox’s outstanding commitment to customer service, has enabled the company to capture significant market share and become a major player in the worldwide production switcher market.”

This is the second year in a row that Frost & Sullivan has honored Snell & Wilcox with a technology award, having honored Kahuna with the Worldwide Technology Leadership Award in Production Switchers in 2005. With the 2006 award, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Snell & Wilcox’s “dedication to growth and demonstrating excellence in meeting the demands of the market.”

The Kahuna production switcher is the first such product to integrate standard-definition (SD) and high-definition (HD) inputs on the same control panel and within the same mainframe, effectively making all SD and HD sources interchangeable. Since its introduction, an extraordinarily wide range of broadcast operations around the globe have since chosen Kahuna, including national TV networks such as Denmark Radio, France 3, China Central Television , Televisa (Mexico), ABC (USA) and Korea’s MBC; mobile truck operators such as Neon Broadcast (UK), Betanews (Italy) and SBP (Italy); many American call-letter television stations; A/V specialists such as U.S.-based LMG; and professional sports teams such as Real Madrid soccer club and the Atlanta Braves baseball team.

“We are gratified to receive this recognition from Frost & Sullivan of our success in gaining market share in the production switcher space, which we owe to our outstanding success with Kahuna,” said Joe Zaller, vice president of marketing at Snell & Wilcox. “The rapid adoption of Kahuna shows just how hungry the broadcast industry has been for innovations in switcher technology that address its real needs for flexibility, versatility, and cost-effectiveness, as the transition to HDTV gains momentum.”

Further information on Kahuna, including a podcast and multimedia presentation, is available at www.snellwilcox.com/kahuna.