Christopher Bolin | Keeping ahead in the computing industry

Uniblue is often confused with an igaming company. What products do you provide and how are they unique to the marketplace?

We definitely aren't in igaming! Uniblue develops products to optimise user's PCs performance with solutions to address speed, disk health, driver updates and overall system maintenance. They work on Windows Vista, XP, 7 and 8 machines - indeed - you can optimise a new PC and feel the difference. Our products are in 13 languages and there are over 6 million PCs using our software today. At the moment our products are catered to PC, however we are working on versions that will be suitable for Macs.

Who are your software programmes marketed to? 

We target the home user - each product comes with licence keys for use on 3 PCs - so this means a whole family can benefit from a single purchase.

The prediction for 2020 is that there will be 50 billion users of computer devices - our products are aimed at allowing the user to concentrate on the function the device was built for without worrying about whether it is working optimally.

Our biggest markets are the US, Germany, UK, Japan and France. We sell, service and support these markets from our HQ, here in Malta.

How have you kept the company continuously growing in such a competitive marketplace?

We have solid products that deliver value to the user, a strong development team that keep our products feature-rich and in line with technology advances. We are about to launch a whole new series of products, which will ensure our position for the future.

When did Uniblue start?

The company started with a handful of employees in 2001 and was called LI Utilites, By 2003, we were Uniblue and based in Malta, and our first product, SpeedUpMyPC, was launched. It is still owned by the same family, who are Swedish, but reside here.

Why did Uniblue move it to Malta?

The owners loved it here and there are benefits for companies in the ICT sector, as well has having a talent pool, which is multilingual and highly qualified.

How many people does Uniblue employ?

Today we have just over 100 staff, and we are on a major recruitment drive to support our current product and growth strategy. The whole company is based here and around half the team are Maltese, with the other 50% coming from as far away as Japan. I, myself am American.

Uniblue is reputed to be a great place to work. Why?

We have a great building, a relaxed working environment, games areas and modern equipment. The team has the opportunity to be heard and their input is valued. Much of the team has been here for a few years and so its like one big family.

We work with the agile methodology, so we never stand still and working across the globe means we have varying strategies, so there's never a dull moment.

Also, our salaries and total package is very generous, competing with the igaming companies but with more security, and we like to promote from within and have organic growth.

What is the future of Uniblue?

Though Uniblue started producing software for PCs, this market is changing rapidly so it is really important for us to keep developing new products.

The computing market is so much more pervasive with an expected 50 billion computer devices to be in circulation by 2020, all of which will be connected to the web.

Many of these products are not PCs anymore but mobile devices - smartphones, tablets etc, even my 72 year old mother uses an iPad. We are expanding our products to move into this market.

Problems encountered by users will also change - today it's the limited battery power and privacy settings that we need to tackle.

We try to prevent issues from happening before they do. We are currently working on products that will allow users to concentrate on the task their device is set out to do rather than worry about whether the device is running at optimal speed.