Sun Microsystems Inc is looking to increase it ownership stake in OpenTV Inc while co-founder of the venture Thomson Multimedia has struck a deal to unload its stake. Thomson announced Monday that it has signed an agreement with Myriad International Holdings to sells its shares in the company it founded with Sun in 1994 to develop interactive television software. Later in the day, Sun confirmed it was in discussions with MIH to purchase some of the shares changing hands. Although no other terms of the two transactions were disclosed, Sun appears to have exercised an existing right of first refusal to purchase some of the shares offered by Thomson. As part of the transaction, Thomson said it has the option right to convert the cash amount received from MIH into shares of Mindport, a new MIH subsidiary to be formed, under which all of the MIH technical businesses will be consolidated. Open TV, which was formerly known as Thomson Sun Interactive, was spun out as an independent operating company in 1996 and claims that its operating system deployed in over 1.9 million digital television worldwide.
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