Philips Shuts Down Pronto Business Unit

This is horrible.  Just after I finished writing a module for the Prontos as well.  UGH!  What a stupid move.  Sad to see a great product like this go away.

Huge bummer. The custom team was really committed and enthusiastic.

How much actual, profitable Pronto business is done by legit integrators?  I would bet $$$ (that’s 3 dollars for those doing the math) that most Pronto business was from retail sales to DIY types and trunk-slammers selling their “services” in the parking lots of those retail stores.  DIY-ers will likely turn to other widely available universal remotes and they won’t even miss Pronto.  Impact on actual, legit, custom integration?  Little if any.

I cut my teeth with the pronto TS-1000 way back when. I still carry one in my computer bag that i use for learning/testing IR commands. Great remote. We switched to URC a couple of years later because of the hard buttons. We never looked at pronto again after that. My guess is that the iPad was the straw that broke the camels back.

@ Julie

True on that.. they were very devoted..

Surely the end of an era!

get ready for the ebay floodgate!

True the 1000 was game changing at the time but the lack of quality control in the 3000 and 3500 came about at a time when other soft button naming remotes came onto the scene.  That wounded Pronto for many years, And besides,  our industry is a cottage industry compared to the numbers a firm like Philips wants to see in units sold.  This economy certainly cannot support so many programmable remote companies, and then stir in the iPad and you have everyone taking a step backwards to gaze through the foggy scene ahead.  We are losing great products on a quarterly basis.  Who is next ?  And, when will it stop….

When an iPad costs half the price of a less functional remote how can the business model for high cost remotes be sustainable.

This is the first of many closures, first it was the media servers, then remote controls and next the half hearted control systems.

It will be the manufacturers first then the distributors anyone relying on selling systems that don’t encompass new technology and user demands cannot survive in this new and fast changing market place.

It is hard to understand why huge companies swallow up smaller companies and consistently fail to integrate all the parts and pieces. Philips could have divested the same product to several of its subsidiaries and maximized the return of the product development. The Pronto, in some form, could be used by Lightolier Controls as an architectural lighting remote for several different lighting systems they control. It could be Brilliant. Color Kinetics could have added it as remote color changing event controller. The Euro dimmer company Dynalite could have upgraded their DTP line of touch panels. And the venerable Strand lighting could revise their Pocket Pallette so techies could run onstage and make lights move and change colors wirelessly with one hand while still holding a cigarette in the other. Someone in the Netherlands made another poor decision.

Will URC be the next remote control company to go?

URC isn’t going anywhere IMO. They are successfully expanding beyond the universal remote control.

I think BitWise controls success did this!

@39 centstamp

Agreed.  URC was smart enough to do some R&D and get out of the remote “only” business.  Their remotes are much less as well, which helps.

Philips has the best touchscreen remote on the market, we have other options to give clients but in the back of our mind we’ll know they’re getting second best.

That being said Im selling 2 in an install in a few weeks and I hope I can get them!

Philips had an excellent, reliable, easy to program, versatile product.  This is really unfortunate.  An iPad or iPhone is not a substitute for something like the TSU9400.  However, having seen the way Philips abandoned other parts of the CE marketplace in the past, this isn’t surprising.  I have customers that love these remotes and no doubt will want to get additional units before the supply runs out.

Very sad developments indeed, another case of fat-cats at the top really having no clue of the “potential” of their own IP and how to refocus/better leverage it. Nah, just sell-it-off for a quick profit.