Control4 CEO Will West said that the move made sense and that in the future recievers could well include a C4 operating system that gives users better access to home automation.
According to TWICE Magazine "TV and audio makers are not home-automation software developers," West said. Licensing Control4's C4iQ OS and user interface will enable them to "get into the market quickly" by leveraging a standards-based OS and adding it to products that already pack "plenty of processing power," to run the software, he said.
Suppliers that adopt C4iQ will also be able to leverage the availability of Control4-branded products in national and specialty retailers as well as in the custom-installation channel, he said. Licensees' products would be able to interoperate with Control4-branded products, including in-wall touchscreens, if the manufactures chose not to offer those products.
"We're not exiting the hardware business," said president/COO Glen Mella. The new strategy, however, will enable the company to "achieve broader penetration" through partnerships with CE companies that could each sell a million units per year.
The company's home-automation products are based on industry standards such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi and wireless ZigBee to simplify the installation of multiroom-audio and home-control systems. The HC-1000, for example, is a home controller, music server and DVD-management system that distributes music from its embedded server and from connected legacy sources to Ethernet- or Wi-Fi-connected tabletop clients.
