AMX: Quietly Conquering the
World One Country at a Time

Michael Olinger, Vice President of AMX International takes us inside ISE, gives us a sneak peek of several new products and lets us in on a big announcement regarding AMX international expansion.

Commitment to Number One

“Merci”, “Danke”, “Grazie”, “Obrigado”, “Dank, “Gracias”, and every other translation of THANKS goes out to each and every one of our International Distributors and global partners for a phenomenal 2007! On behalf of the entire AMX International team, I would like to thank each of you for your ambition, your drive and your unrelenting commitment to be Number One in every one of the countries that AMX is sold in. What a stellar year it’s been for us and it’s all due to YOU.

As we embark on our fifth Integrated Systems Europe show this week in Amsterdam, I can honestly say that the buzz of anticipation surrounding this week’s announcements has spilled out of the Netherlands and has begun to encircle the globe. With record attendance predicted to hover near 17,000, this year’s ISE looks to be yet another indicator of the unprecedented growth we are seeing throughout the International market.

In addition to our showcase of the world’s finest Touch Panels, Keypads, Integrated Controllers, Matrix Switchers and Distributed Media solutions (just to name a few), at this year’s show, we will be introducing the two newest members of the AMX family which we recently acquired earlier this year – Inspired Signage and ProCon – both of which were founded and based in the UK.

New Acquisitions

At InfoComm, we expanded our best-of-breed product offering with the acquisition of Inspired Signage, a manufacturer of robust digital signage solutions. The addition of Inspired Signage allows us to meet virtually any digital signage design, management and distribution need and allows customers to schedule and deliver vibrant, animated multimedia content to display screens across a network of sites locally, nationally or globally.

We were also excited to add ProCon Technology to the AMX portfolio this year. ProCon is well known for their simple, cost effective control pads, switchers and distribution amplifiers that are perfect for education, government, business and other markets. The first AMX products utilizing ProCon technology are the Novara and Solecis product lines, which are debuting this week. 

KNX is the world’s first open, royalty free, and platform independent standard for home and commercial building control and we are thrilled to unveil the new KNX Communication Gateway at ISE.

The new Gateway allows NetLinx Controllers the ability to seamlessly control, integrate and communicate with homes and buildings that utilize the KNX communication protocol. With the widespread popularity of the KNX protocol throughout Europe, this opens up many new possibilities in the home and building control market for our European Distributors.

We are kicking off 2008 in a big way by launching not one, but two new AMX Direct regional offices during the first quarter. While we continue to be represented on the whole internationally by a network of top-notch distributors, our direct offices have enabled us to provide an even higher level of customer service and support.

Additionally, we are able to house our sales and technical support staff as well as classrooms for AMX University. Each of our direct offices also includes a world class product showroom to allow visitors to experience AMX technology for themselves in person.

Expanding Our Reach

We closed out 2007 by opening a brand new Asia Pacific office in Singapore in December and then expanded even further by announcing a new Central Europe Office to open near Stuttgart, Germany in April. Now, I am pleased to share with you that we will open yet another AMX direct regional office in Bangalore, India in mid-February. India is a beautiful country that is embracing technology in unique and innovative ways and we are ecstatic about having a direct presence there.

As you can see, 2008 is already shaping up to be another phenomenal year for the international market. We continue to see steady growth around the world but we are simply amazed by the surge we are seeing in many emerging markets where people are finally getting the opportunity to experience the life-simplifying effect that AMX products create for them. So technically we haven’t conquered the entire world yet, but as you can see we’re not too far away.