"This agreement marks an important relationship for Martin as we look to bring our first LED-based products to market this year and help drive adoption of this fast-emerging technology," said Christian Engsted, president and CEO of Martin Professional. "We recognize that LEDs will prominently impact the global lighting market, and believe that leveraging Color Kinetics' developed patent portfolio will strengthen our competitive position in this new and highly anticipated market direction for Martin.
"LED technology has experienced continual improvement over the years though we still expect to see a lot of evolution in the area. However, we feel that the quality and stability of the technology is now at a point where, in some of our segments, we are confident of offering a Martin product range. In addition, for certain higher end applications, we will now be able to offer the customer the choice of either an LED or a traditional light source solution, each with its own merits, and thereby give the customer an even broader product range to choose from.
Engsted added that the company's professional lighting packages "will increasingly become a mixture of automated lighting, digital media and LED fixtures".
Bill Sims, president and CEO of Color Kinetics, said: "Martin Professional has long been an industry leader in entertainment lighting. This agreement underscores our strategy to create a universal foundation for intelligent LED lighting, in part by enabling third-party product development through licensing. We believe this will benefit the industry at large by enabling new market entrants that can further fuel adoption."
Martin's first LED products are scheduled for commercial release at the PLASA Show in London later this year (10-13 September 2006).
(Lee Baldock)
