Alarm.com and Comcast Close Icontrol Acquisition – CE Pro (Mar 9, 2017)
I got not one but two press releases yesterday from different companies saying they had closed their acquisitions of Icontrol, and that’s because Comcast and Alarm.com split what was previously one company’s assets into two and each took the piece it was most interested in. Alarm.com gets the piece that’s most similar to its existing business, which is white label smart home systems for alarm companies, while Comcast gets the part that helps manage its own existing smart home systems and similar ones for other cable companies. Both Comcast and Alarm.com are currently focused on the service model for the smart home, which I continue to think is the most promising for mainstream adoption, but the Icontrol acquisition actually gives Alarm.com a way to pursue a DIY model too, while Comcast gets a way to start licensing its home automation platform, something it already does with its X1 set top box operating system. We’re going to see lots more acquisitions in this space over the next few years, and I’m betting a lot of them will be focused on the service model, although we’ll also see some service companies enabling the DIY model as a way to capture the smaller number of higher spending early adopters.
via CE Pro
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