At the beginning of last year Amazon purchased LoveFilm, a European film subscription service, and then followed up by acquiring Pushbutton, a company that specialize in designing and building user interfaces. Amazon have now announced plans to combine the two UK-based media companies and their teams, and create a new international center for digital media development near Silicon Roundabout in central London, England.
Amazon might be a US firm with it’s headquarters in Seattle, but they still say London was the obvious choice for their new digital media development center. According to Amazon, Great Britain has led the way in pioneering on-demand services, which allow users to rent films and television over the Internet. It’s also worth noting that both LoveFilm and Pushbutton were founded in London.
The new center will open within the coming weeks and will be housed in a eight-story, 47,000sq.ft building in Glasshouse Yard. This location is close to the Barbican cultural center, within an easy walking distance from the Silicon Roundabout, Google Campus, an number of data center facilities.
The plan is to move the entire design and development teams from Pushbutton and LoveFilm into the new location as soon as possible. Amazon has not yet disclosed how many staff the site will house, but said hundreds of existing LoveFilm and Pushbutton staff would move in next week, and they will also hire additional talent in the near future.
“London is a hotbed of tech talent, and testament to that fact is Amazon choosing the capital as the location for its new global digital media development center. Innovation is part of the Amazon DNA, and we are creating a British center of excellence to design and develop the next generation of TV and film services for a wide range of digital devices”, said the center’s new managing director Paula Byrne
LoveFilm is a European film subscription service with over two million members in UK, Germany and the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway
Pushbutton is a design firm specializing in the design and building of user interfaces to enable viewers to select and watch digital media content across a wide range of device platforms. They also helped to create the LoveFilm Instant streaming service, among many other projects.
