The Masked Installer on The death of Pronto

The Masked Installer mulls the recent death of the Philips Pronto as well as considers exactly how much a specific Cuppertino tablet was to blame. He considers the manage System options as well as ponders what it means for the custom Installation industry…

“Philips withdrawing from the manage market by closing the Pronto operation is rather a surprise as well as it’s got us believing once again about where the manage System market may be headed.

We’ve never done a great deal with the Philips Pronto. We’ve got a couple in jobs as well as we’ve even got an old monochrome system back at the home in the discarded set mountain (for details of the discarded set mountain please get in touch with the editor as well as I’m sure we can kind something out). great deal of dealerships rave about the Pronto as well as I’ve seen some lovely work done on it – A NetStreams DigiLinX controller that put NetStream’s own touch panel to shame, a truly nice module to manage the DF solutions variety of servers, Sonos manage etc. Yet with all that as well as in spite of what appeared like rather an active pipeline of advancement Philips have decided to pull the plug.

It doesn’t look like a panic exit. Philips have been trying to restructure, offer or move this operation for two years. having failed to discover one more path they’ve just closed the doors. as well as in doing so they’ve published a huge message to the custom Installation market that states “We don’t believe this is a market that’s worth pursuing”.

Finding numbers in the custom Installation market is tricky. It’s not simple to get to market share figures however gut feel states that the Pronto variety did quite well. It was a huge player in a fairly little pond. From our point of view it knocked areas off the hideous offering from Nevo as well as in terms of its extensibility it was ahead of RTI. We didn’t accept it since it was getting close to AMX in terms of what it might do however had a advancement atmosphere that even its own mom would struggle to love. We saw it as a threat as well as it’s a genuine surprise to see it go. now it has gone we requirement to comprehend what it may tell us about the manage System market.

In pulling what appeared to be a successful variety with a strong client base, Philips appears to be telling us that the manage System market isn’t an appealing sufficient proposition. other business are telling us similar things. Control4 have pulled their variety of wireless touch panels as well as if you’ve utilized the Control4 iPad app you’ll most likely agree that’s a practical move. The iPad is a game changer; I suspect we’ll never offer one more AMX 5200i even though the cost of the Touchpanel manage app for AMX is knocking on of what we’d pay for a Pronto 9600. people want as well as expect to be able to manage their wise houses with the iPad as well as provided it can be performed in a method that we believe trustworthy enough, we’re happy with that. We won’t make money selling iPads (or the app) however we’ll command a margin for doing the difficult stuff – make it work, make it work reliably, hide the ugly stuff as well as make it look as well as noise beautiful.

Interesting times for custom Installers. I’m sure AMX, Crestron, RTI as well as Control4 are hectic working out just exactly how they stay relevant.”

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