Strategy in TECH...
Amazon.com Inc.’s secretive tech innovation development center, called Lab126, is said to be working on a more robust, step-up smart home control solution designed to be mounted into the wall, in a bid to take share in the custom integration channel. The move, first reported by Bloomberg News, is designed to take on major players such as SnapAV’s Control4 and other “professionally installed smart home control” providers.
Kicking off their first ever virtual dealer event called Snap Pro Live, SnapAV unleashes a broad array of new products covering their wide gamut of product and service segments. Snap Pro Live runs for three days and kicked off today (Tuesday) afternoon with a keynote from CEO John Heyman – and this major product launch.
Event season is upon us, as evidenced by the two major events that took place last week – CEDIA Expo Virtual 2020 and Crestron NEXT. This year, thanks to COVID-19, these normally in-person events took place in the digital domain as virtual events. And the next big show that integrators are going to want to watch for – which will also be a virtual event – is the upcoming Snap Pro Live being produced by industry powerhouse SnapAV.
SnapAV announced today that it has engineered an all-new version of their popular OvrC remote monitoring and management system (RMM). This new version, launched in the wake of their acquisition of Control4 last year with its competitive Pakedge networking, as well as BakPak and Ihiji remote monitoring solutions, is said to combine the best of all of these systems.
As we hurtle headlong into the a new decade – the 2020s – it’s a good time to pause and take stock of some of the major events of our industry’s recent history by ranking the Top 10 Strata-gee stories of 2019 based on total page views. This ranking shows just what stories drew the most attention of Strata-gee’s eminently intelligent and inquisitive readers.
A funny thing happened this year at the 2019 CEDIA Expo…everyone I ran into kept asking me the same thing – what is the big story from the show? What’s funny is that I asked them the same question. Even when I ran into other members of the media…we often queried each other. Most kind of shrugged and would mention an item or two, but nothing that represented a major theme of the event.
However, there is an answer I came up with, but I’m not sure its the best answer…
The industry is still adjusting to the new normal of SnapAV combining with Control4…even as it continues to gobble up more local distributors and talk about their e-commerce prowess. It can get a little confusing. Is SnapAV a manufacturer? An e-commerce play? A local distributor? Or are they attempting to be all of the above?
I spoke with SnapAV’s John Heyman and Charlie Kindel to try and help our readers sort this all out. It’s certainly a new world out there…but just what planet are we on?
As Strata-gee recently reported, there are currently seven active lawsuits that have been filed against Control4 and their Board of Directors in the wake of their acquisition by SnapAV. In a new DEFA14A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last Friday, the company addresses the issue of these lawsuits – saying that they are going to fight them. But then they do something very curious – they file an amendment to their original Schedule 14A filing, their Proxy Statement, with added information that appears to add missing material in response to allegations in the lawsuits filed against them.
The Control4 Corporation has been hit with another class action lawsuit filed on behalf of all shareholders of their stock in connection with their acquisition by Wirepath Home Systems, LLC – better known as SnapAV. Filed by the law firm of Rigrodsky & Long, P.A., the lawsuit alleges certain violations of Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and names both Control4 and its Board of Directors as defendants.
Credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded the credit rating of Wirepath LLC (corporate name of SnapAV) from B2 to B3 in the wake of their announced acquisition of Control4. The primary reason for the downgrade is due to the fact that SnapAV will be forced to increase their debt by an additional $390 million to a new high of $683 million in order to close on this acquisition.
