C4 market penetration

[dgbrown]

Does anyone have a take on the # of commercial vs. residential installs there are in the US and/or worldwide ? Absolute figures and %'s welcome.

[jberger]

I don't think there is any public data released by C4 on those numbers.

In commercial, C4 is said to have the largest wireless zigbee installation and possibly the largest commercial automation installation with the Las Vegas City Center. The last numbers I saw were over 90,000 zigbee pro radios in over 4000 rooms.

They've claimed to have shipped over 1 million devices, and are the market leader in Zigbee and Zigbee Pro. So I'd guess 100,000 controllers out of a million devices.

Contrast this with the last numbers I heard from Home Logic, 4000 systems installed.

[dgbrown]

Interesting, I was playing around with #'s myself but had a hard time coming up with anything concrete.

@ 70 zigbee devices per controller thats 14,200 controllers

@ 50 zigbee devices per controller thats 20,000 controllers

You're suggesting 100,000 controllers which net's to 10 zigbee devices per.

I'm trying to equate any of those #'s to installations/projects ....

[M3AL]

I don't think there is any public data released by C4 on those numbers.

In commercial, C4 is said to have the largest wireless zigbee installation and possibly the largest commercial automation installation with the Las Vegas City Center. The last numbers I saw were over 90,000 zigbee pro radios in over 4000 rooms.

They've claimed to have shipped over 1 million devices, and are the market leader in Zigbee and Zigbee Pro. So I'd guess 100,000 controllers out of a million devices.

Contrast this with the last numbers I heard from Home Logic, 4000 systems installed.

I'm actually going to Las Vegas next week and am staying at the Aria hotel just because they have Control4 in every room. I'm pretty excited about that.

[bhadams]

I'd tend to lean towards the higher controller number (jberger's estimation). During the years I was with Safe and Sound in SLC they were the top volume dealer in at least the country and did boat loads of controller only systems as well as the big installs. I don't think they were alone in that.

[ILoveC4]

Yeah, I know several dealers that install a Control4 HC200 or HC300 in a theater room just to get the SR-250 to work and get IR control over the devices. It is cheaper than most Harmony remotes, more flexible, and scalable. This wets the clients appetite and gets them wanting more. I would imagine there are 50x more of these small systems (at least) than the large, whole home systems like most of us have.

We are the minority here I'll bet. I would imagine a large percentage of Control4 "systems" the homeowner has no idea what they have, and have very few zigbee devices.

[dgbrown]

I'm trying to get a handle on the market opportunity for 4store given the install base and likely take-up.

We could estimate 100,000 as the installed base and a conservative conversion rate of 3% for any one app/driver ...

That's a take up of 3,000 units per released app/driver.

@ 225 for the ATV driver and $365 for the Sonos integration that's $675k USD and $1.1M USD respectively, not considering dealer and C4 cuts.

[RyanE]

Is 3% really a 'conservative conversion rate'?

You would have to know the percentage of Control4 installs that also have AppleTV and/or Sonos.

Then you'd have to consider the percentage of Control4 dealers that are aware of the drivers' existence.

I suspect they certainly *could possibly* make good money from it, but I don't know how you can accurately guess how much.

Also, just picking nits, but neither of those drivers are from the '4Store'. They're offered by a 3rd party, with download from and payment to the 3rd party.

4Store apps are flash applications loaded into the end user's OS 2.0 Navigator (once released).

RyanE

[dgbrown]

The issue here is the "pay for drivers" in my opinion are setting the tone for what's in store pricing wise from the 4store (yes, I'm well aware of the details surrounding the "nits" - drivers vs. apps, flash lite vs. lua, etc). However the 4store will in essence become a marketing vehicle for app/driver developers in that it will make these 3rd party efforts visible - front and center - to the soon to be entire 2.x install base.

From EV on Sonos: "It will be even more “recognizable” after Control4 2.0 ships. Then Vegetables can offer enhanced graphical features such as cover art. The company will offer such enhancements via the 4Store app store."

The aforementioned indicates to me that the parties to the transaction will change too, assuming C4 is clearing transactions for the 4store.

You may have a different opinion on where I'm coming from and that also may because you know a thing or two that I don't and all that's fine.

In terms of conversion, yes you're right. If you wanted to come to a concise # you would in fact need a significant amount of detail. But for this exercise, a back of the napkin so to speak, 3% or so for a captive and engaged audience is a fair #. Your marketing dept can validate this as a generally used metric.

My only point is this, there's potentially big numbers on the table here, and from a consumer perspective given the current pricing there may be a little gouging going on. Though market sizing is always more art than science .....

This all said "a guy's gotta eat!" and they certainly are entitled to set their price as I am my opinion.

Best,

Dave

Edited: Spelling

[RyanE]

Valid points.

As a *technie* who tries to avoid all the sales/marketing he can, I'm really not qualified to say what would be a good 'back of the envelope' uptake percentage. I was mostly just curious if you really thought that was conservative.

Yes, there could be significant profit, but it's also hard to determine what would constitute gouging for something like this.

I'm sure if a different developer thinks there is enough incentive, they could always write a competing driver and undercut. I doubt that'll happen with the Sonos driver, because it is pretty niche, and it's really not a simple driver to write.

The nice thing about the 4Store is that it could bring some of that competition, with a single marketplace, vs. individual 3rd-parties making drivers. IMHO, without a marketplace, it's much less likely that someone would make a competing solution.

Cheers.

RyanE

[dgbrown]

^ Well said, I couldn't agree more ! I'll just add, without the promise of a marketplace those who are capable of "creating" likely won't. That incentive to create is a good thing. We'll all benefit from 4store.

Net-net - Just trying to shape the world

Dave