The market has not yet caught on, and the stock is trading below tangible book value and near the value of its liquid assets, as it is priced at only about 120% of net cash. So with that said, who would want anything to do with the company today? Well fast forward to 2013, and RealNetworks is now releasing several new products which could prove as strong catalysts for its business going forward. Tech analysts such as PC World in 2006 rated the 1999 version of RealPlayer the #2 worst tech product of all-time, for its " aggressive installations, uninvited popups, and insidious registry rewrites". Not helping was the persistent adware claims and other annoyances with the software. At its peak, RealPlayer had nearly 85% market share for streaming content, but this quickly fell when Adobe ( ADBE) Flash, Microsoft ( MSFT) Windows Media Player and a host of others flooded the market with free offerings. This software dominated the streaming audio and video markets up until about 2000. Those of you who spent a lot of time online in the mid to late 90s probably remember well RealAudio and later RealPlayer. Free to download for Android devices, iOS devices and the Roku streaming box.Back in April I published an article on long forgotten RealNetworks ( NASDAQ: RNWK), a dinosaur of the early internet days. The app is tied to RealNetworks’ cloud video service, which offers free storage up to 2 GB and then bigger storage plans starting from $4.99 per month. Syncing between devices is very quick, as is uploading, and users never have to think twice about conversion software. If users have a Roku streaming box, the videos will even show up on the television. The RealPlayer Cloud app works across multiple platforms - mobile, PC and Web - and makes it so that any video can play on any of those devices.
RealNetworks - whose name you may remember from RealPlayer - is taking its multimedia know-how and applying it to video storage and sharing. It’s fairly easy, actually, to share video between iOS users, or between Android users, but going across platforms is a pain. Sharing video can be a surprisingly difficult and nerve-wracking process, particularly if not every one of your friends and relatives uses the same device as you do.
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