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iPad ‘Means Nothing But Good Things’ for Crestron
The iPad won’t put Crestron out of business anytime soon.
When Apple announced the thin, beautiful touchscreen that is iPad, plenty of dealers pointed to Crestron as the one company that would take a big hit. But just because touchscreens are the face of Crestron doesn’t mean they’re the linchpin of the company.
In fact, touchscreens comprise only 5 to 8 percent of Crestron’s business today.
“I don’t think we’ll go out of business if it all goes to iPad,” Klein says.
iPad wasn’t the first “scare” for Crestron.
“When we first came out with a software application that let you turn your PC into a touchpanel,” says Klein, “a lot of our dealers said, ‘Are you crazy? We’ll never sell any touchscreens anymore.’”
That hasn’t happened, of course.
Then there was the iPhone app. Klein says over 20,000 Crestron apps have been downloaded so far.
“I can tell you, we didn’t get 20,000 fewer touchscreen sales,” he says.
Does iPad Make Sense for Automation?
Klein suggests that the biggest problem with the iPad is that it doesn’t fit in a pocket. He says alteration classes may be in order to increase the size of pant pockets.
Beyond that, the tablet can’t rival dedicated touchscreens and remotes.
Klein says, “The ideal remote control is something anybody can sit down and use seamlessly and reliably – and something that’s affordable, relatively speaking.”
Crestron in a Microsoft conference room
He points to Cisco and Microsoft as two entities that tried to run boardrooms and buildings with their own technology … and finally gave up.
“Cisco tried to use their telephones to run conference rooms,” Klein says. “Microsoft tried to run everything on PCs but found out Crestron is a better way to do it.”
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Article Topics
News · Product News · Home Automation and Control · Home Automation · Ipad · Crestron ·About the Author
3 Comments (displayed in order by date/time)
Randy Klein stretches the truth. Both Microsoft and Cisco use PCs as the control platform in their most precious presentation rooms at their respective Executive Briefing Centers, where heads of corporations and heads of state are hosted.
Cisco runs most of its regional briefing centers through their phones and I’d expect with the marriage of Cisco and Tandberg, that’ll grow and migrate into their everyday meeting rooms, where Crestron and AMX presently dominate.
The days of inflated pricing on glass are on the wane. If the iPad doesn’t kill Crestron’s touchpanel business, it and offerings from HP, Acer and others will cut deeply into their touchpanel business. They’ll also lose sales of the control boxes that the touchpanels attract.
Open systems are on the rise, iPad is just another piece of the puzzle.
I’ve programmed a lot of Crestron control systems and touchpanels in my day, and I don’t know of a more “open” system. Especially for the person who matters most - my clients (the end users).
That last paragraph in the post above seems more like a wish than a rational business statement.
A product, no matter the industry, that gives its customers the best functionality and value, will always thrive. And according to every one of my customers over the last 15 or so years, Crestron touchpanels do exactly that.
Best to all,
Ken
How well I remember those same words coming from Ken Olsen back in the ‘90’s when his company, Digital Equipment (DEC) employed over 125,000 people and generated over $14 Billion a year. It took over 8 years from that first “scare” to the end of DEC as an entity….and since my company back then was on the losing side (DEC’s proprietary systems), I learned my lesson well. The point is not that proprietary systems will go down because they aren’t selling touchscreens. The point is that open systems and choices are now becoming available and popular with the consumer. The pieces are now all falling into place for alternative control systems that are powerful and cost effective. Affordable networks in the home, the Internet, control software that runs on a PC/iPad/Android/web browser, connectivity gear that connects your “stuff”, all those things weren’t readily available just a few years ago. Now they are. These shifts don’t happen overnight and don’t necessarily mean the end to Crestron, just the end to ridiculously high-priced systems.