Control4 Expands OEM Relationships

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 2/23/2009

Salt Lake City — Control4 expanded its OEM relationships to include D&M Holdings' Escient brand, having last year launched an OEM relationship with Sony.

Under its agreement with D&M, Control4 will build Escient-branded home-control equipment for sale by D&M in more than 27 countries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Last year, Sony began including Control4-branded home-control equipment in multi-room-A/V rack systems for the custom-installation channel.

The D&M relationship is limited to overseas markets, at least for now. “We have no immediate plans to expand this specific business arrangement in North America,” D&M said. “However, we will continue to explore opportunities to collaborate globally for the benefit of both companies.

The agreement, D&M said, “has resulted in the potential to expand the custom-installation market in our Europe region. Marketing Control4 technology in these 27 countries will enhance our ability to increase sales of our numerous custom installation products offered by many of our brands.”

D&M Holdings, the company continued, “has a history of distributing third-party products in markets where the market is underserved.”

Control4 said will provide D&M “an extensive array of home automation products under the Escient brand, including controllers, remotes, keypads, lighting controls, thermostats and touchscreens.

Besides establishing OEM alliances to supplement its own sales of Control4-branded hardware, Control4 actively markets its standards-based home-control operating system to CE suppliers to embed in CE products. The company's home-automation products are based on industry standards such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi and wireless ZigBee to simplify the installation of multi-room-audio and home-control systems.

Companies that have licensed Control4's OS include LG, initially for hotel room TVs, and Panasonic for integration into IP phones.