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Motorola acquires 4Home; eyes 'smart home' tech

Motorola will acquire 4Home, maker of a platform that enables home energy management, automation, media management and security.
Written by Andrew Nusca, Contributor

Motorola on Wednesday announced that it would acquire connected home startup 4Home.

The mobile giant's interest, of course, is in the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company's ControlPoint software platform, which facilitates serves such as energy management, home security, automation, media management and what it broadly defines as "home health."

4Home's technology aims to build out the promise of the smart grid by going beyond the meter, to actually make smart devices worthwhile to the user. With eventual connectivity, you'll be able to manage your clothes dryer, coffee maker and plug-in electric car from your smartphone.

We're not quite there yet, of course. However, 4Home's market differentiator is media management -- most rivals in the home energy management space (Tendril, Microsoft Hohm, Control4, etc.) have stuck to bars and charts and stayed away from album covers.

The platform is built using open standards, and can be installed anywhere on a home network. The company's Portal Server application allows for scalable home control services that can be rolled out to the mass market.

4Home's investors include Pond Venture Partners, Parker Price Venture Capital and Verizon Investments.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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