Video compression company Forbidden Technologies claims it has made significant progress with its products in the six months to June. But despite the optimism, deals remain somewhat elusive. Leslie Copeland reports.

Chairman Victor Steel said he was 'quietly confident' that deals would flow once the market realised the progress Forbidden had made with its compression technology.

In a series of presentations today, the group proved that it had developed the technology to transmit recorded videos onto such devices as personal digital assistants (hand-held computers, etc). It also proved its ability to deliver video over normal connections to websites without the need for bothersome 'plug-in' software.

Likewise, Forbidden suggested that its 'new Java mobile phone codec' could deliver high quality photos, images and videos to the next generation of 2.5G mobile phones. With 2.5G now gaining a foothold, the market for this technology could be huge.

As yet though, actual deals that would lead to significant revenues flowing into the company have proved elusive. At the interim stage, sales were negligible (£5,000) although the pre-tax loss was surprisingly low at £147,906.

Forbidden has around £2.95 million in cash, enough to see it through for a number of years if sales don't materialise in the short term.