EchoStar dumps ‘SAGE’ home security product
August 10, 2016
By Chris Forrester
EchoStar’s CEO Mike Dugan, speaking at the company’s Q2 earnings call, said EchoStar’s speciality products division, ETC, was discontinuing its SAGE home automation and security products. “Although the product had a number of ground-breaking features, a dramatic change in the competitive landscape, heavily impacted our chance of this product producing a significant positive long-term results for EchoStar.”
“I still think the product has potential. It has some great features and so on but for EchoStar we just weren’t ready to proceed with that at this time.”
Dugan said the ETC division would continue to create customer facing products, and highlighted how its Hopper range now included the HopperGO and voice remote, which DISH is now offering to their customers. “The HopperGO is a pocket-sized DVR that lets users to securely transfer up to 100 hours of recorded TV shows and move these from Hopper 3 or Hopper 2 DVR for on the go online viewing,” he added.
EchoStar itself, which owns and manages the fleet of satellite for DISH as well as the Hughes suite of VSAT services, had revenues of $758 million in Q2 ($794m last year) and not helped by revenue reductions in its EchoStar Technology and EchoStar Satellite Services subsidiaries, and further impacted by lower equipment sales at DISH.