Stephen Streater, the chief executive of Forbidden Technologies (LON:FBT), believes that the growing popularity of the company’s cloud-based video editing platform in the broadcast post-production market is a sign that the industry is beginning to embrace a new generation of technology.

In the first six months of this year, sales of Forbidden’s professional level FORscene system to the UK broadcast post-production market jumped by 94%. Ambitions to sign more partnership deals with global-scale systems integrators (Forbidden has three in the bag already) have been frustrated by depressed global economics. Nevertheless, Streater is confident that a pipeline of such deals will soon begin bearing fruit. In the meantime, the cash proceeds from last October’s £1.6 million share placing have given the company more capacity and the confidence to begin negotiating more directly with broadcasters, production and professional web companies. Forbidden believes it is now particularly well placed to service not only the broadcast, professional web and user-generated video markets but also make inroads into News and Sport as well.

In turn, the recent launch of its consumer system, Clesh, as an app available on Android-powered tablet computers and smartphones remains in the experimental early phases, but Streater is confident that it could eventually be a significant market. His optimism reflects the fact that the explosion in the use of web video on sites such as Facebook and YouTube is being spurred by increasingly powerful cameras on mobile devices. The availability of Clesh as a means of editing video on the go and sending it to the web in an instant is an increasingly compelling service.

In the six months to June 30, 2011, Forbidden reported an 8% increase in revenues to £0.18 million, with gross profit marginally down at £0.15 million. Operating costs increased by £0.1 million to £0.32 million and the operating loss for the period also increased by £0.1 million to £0.15 million. The company ended the period with cash and cash equivalents of £0.9 million.

Stephen, you have just announced your interim results so what have been the main developments at Forbidden so far this year?

We have been concentrating more on the broadcast market because operators in that market really understand the capabilities of what we do. We used to sell individually to production companies but now we have got more and more of the…

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