Frost & Sullivan Presents Toon Boom with 2011 Global Award for Animation Software Entrepreneurial Company of the Year

Based on its recent analysis of the animation software market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Toon Boom Animation Inc. with the 2011 Global Frost & Sullivan Award for Entrepreneurial Company of the Year. In a highly concentrated market, where the top three companies hold nearly 67 percent of the market share, Toon Boom has shown remarkable entrepreneurial spirit, rapidly gaining a strong foothold through product innovation, marketing and the implementation of well-rounded strategy.

"Compared with its competitors, Toon Boom exhibited multi-dimensional strategies to meet its objectives," said Frost & Sullivan research analyst Prayerna Raina. "For the past seven years, Toon Boom has consistently added products to broaden its offerings, emphasized and refined its key differentiating features, expanded into verticals other than media & entertainment, and continued to strengthen its position in emerging markets."

Consequently, the company has posted double-digit growth rate annually for the past three years and shown to be among the highest compounded annual growth rate in the overall (2D and 3D) animation software market from 2008 to 2011. Canada-based Toon Boom's revenue is primarily driven by international markets, both developed and developing economies. It has been present in emerging markets for some years now, but in 2010-2011, the company increased its efforts to capitalize on the growing demand in those markets.

"Not only is Toon Boom responding to the demands in these markets, but also creating awareness with regards to best practices of animation creation," noted Raina. "It is creating a greater push for use of its products in colleges for formal training and has lent its expertise and knowledge to new animation studios in enabling them become world-class studios to initially create outsourced animation work and eventually their own content."

Expanding its product line to compete in new verticals and address new customer segments is a core part of Toon Boom's strategy. While Harmony, the company's primary high-end animation product, is focused on professional studios, Animate is for entry-level professionals, Toon Boom Studio for students, teachers, and hobbyists; and Flip Boom Doodle, Flip Boom Cartoon, Flip Boom All-Star and Animation-ish for hobbyists and prosumers of all skill levels. The company offers a suite of products for school education and enables quick sharing of animations on social networking websites. It also offers storyboarding and comic strip creation software tools.

Working with its three close technology partners - Nelvana, Walt Disney, and Apple - Toon Boom has created new areas of excellence and expertise for clients. It has made innovations that allow creation of an animation project in multiple geographic regions and the use of mixed media for a desired look and feel and flexibility in costs. Another innovation involves a methodology to determine the number of people needed in a production pipeline and their exact productivity so as to efficiently plan project resources.

In addition to creating high value for its clients, Toon Boom's understanding of local demand trends ties directly into Toon Boom's growth strategy excellence. Coupled with its speed of response to market needs, this understanding has enabled Toon Boom to position itself as a leading vendor of digital content creation tools and not just an animation software company.

Viewed comprehensively, Toon Boom is employing its animation expertise for expansion into other verticals, customer segments, and related applications. To accomplish this objective, the company has taken several steps on multiple levels - products, technology, verticals, geographic presence, and even its organizational strategy (it has 46.0 percent first-generation immigrant employees in the company and covers 21 languages). It is well-positioned to leverage creatively mixed 2D and 3D opportunities as well the growth in markets such as India and China in Asia-Pacific.

Based on these factors, Frost & Sullivan is proud to present the 2011 Global Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award in animation software to Toon Boom. Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated a strong growth strategy and robustly implemented it. The recipient has shown strength in terms of innovation in products/technologies, leadership in customer value and speedy response to market needs.

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About Toon Boom Animation Inc.

Toon Boom Animation Inc. (http://www.toonboom.com) is the worldwide leader in digital content and animation creation software, delivering products and services online to its global community. Toon Boom carries user-friendly applications for all, catering to children, home users, creative professionals as well as students, educators and schools. Toon Boom is fully dedicated to education and goes far beyond just developing technology and curriculums that will enhance the classroom experience. Toon Boom is an influential advocate of bringing industry and education together, while partnering with value-added partners to help students achieve their goals.

At the high-end studio level, Toon Boom offers a wide product range from powerful pre-production tools to leading-edge animation production solutions. Relying on its extensive expertise in animation production, Toon Boom provides consulting services in the fields of optimization, pipeline integration, production assistance and custom development.

About Frost & Sullivan

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