OUR KEY PLAYERS
Ari Pöyhtäri
CEO, Co-Founder
Responsible for the overall management, strategy and business development. One of the Co-founders.
Erkki Salminen
Chief Business Development Officer
Responsible for business development especially through recruitment and personnel development.
Janne Riihimäki
Director of Service Design
Responsible for UX-design lead and building the best user experiences for the end users. Also involved in marketing operations.
Juha Joki
Director, Broadcast and Testing
In charge of DVB Broadcast products and testing and certification services.
Juho Mäyränpää
Sales Director
In charge of sales, distribution, product packaging and marketing operations.
Mika Kanerva
COO, Executive Vice President
Responsible for ongoing business, operations and R&D. Also one of the Co-founders.
Tommi Riikonen
Product Line Manager
Responsible for Sofia Backstage® Studio and Sofia Backstage® Author.
Join our team!
We are currently recruiting smart TV developers, apply soon!
WE COME FROM FINLAND
Finland in the late ‘90s was a real hotbed of exciting new innovations. Digital mobile phones, internet technologies, digital broadcasting… many pioneering new technologies later affecting billions of lives were developed here from the scratch.
In this exciting atmosphere some of the founders of Sofia Digital met during a common research project about nascent digital TV broadcasting. It soon developed into a business idea, and Sofia Digital was founded in the year 2000.
Back then, while many device manufacturers were creating their individual solutions, Sofia Digital believed in universal standards and following them. “Sofia” means “wisdom” in Greek, and adhering to standards is a wise thing to do.
Nowadays, Sofia Digital combines the pioneering knowledge of digital broadcasting and internet technologies with Scandinavian design and usability ideals. This way, our solutions are both functional and pleasant to use.
This Finnish recipe for success has been proven time and time again in every corner of the globe – with very satisfied customers. The way we see it, everyone in Sofia Digital should be proud of the results of their work.
WHY FINLAND
For a small country, Finland has been the home of many groundbreaking companies and technical innovations such as Nokia and Linux. Finland was also one of the first countries to adopt DVB technology, which led to pioneering work with digital TV standards and technologies.
About Sofia Digital
Sofia Digital is an international high-tech company based in Finland, Tampere, having over 20 years of history delivering services for TV screens and interactive smart devices. The company specializes on media technologies, broadcasting and streaming services using TV standards and Internet technologies.
Sofia Digital’s typical projects consist of development and hosting of new TV and Video services, made available both in broadcast and broadband – and can support both hosted and on-premises service models. Since company was founded year 2000, various deployments and projects have been successfully delivered in Europe, Africa, North and South America, Middle East and South-East Asia where especially Asia and Europe are growing regions during the year 2020.
Sofia Backstage® Platform is software-based product family available for powering smart TV and linear TV services in TV-network operator’s head-end and online environments. Sofia Backstage® helps customers to manage and aggregate any electronic formats of Television and TV-programming metadata including support for the latest interactive TV standard called HbbTV (Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV).
Sofia Digital is working in co-operation with the TV and media industry, online technology companies and CE manufacturers. As an active member of the HbbTV Association Sofia Digital is able to provide the best possible level of interoperability for HbbTV and MPEG-DASH deployed in global TV markets.
Sofia Digital operates in Tampere area, some 200 kilometres from the Helsinki metropolitan region but easily reachable via a train connection. Tampere is known for its industrial history and in particular Finlayson textile factory which was the largest industrial facility in Finland for a long time. It was in Finlayson's factory building where the first electric lights in Finland and the Scandinavia were turned on in 1882. The power for the lighting came from the near-by Tammerkoski rapids where the Finland's first hydropower plant was established.
Today the factory buildings and Tammerkoski rapids are still an important landmark in Tampere, but unlike the factories which are not operational anymore the rapids are still being used as before. Sofia Digital is proudly continuing the area's industrial tradition by using the green energy coming from the Tampere rapids.
