Underwriters Laboratories acquires Futuremark, the makers of 3DMark

3DMark has been a staple of PC enthusiasts all across the world for over a decade, but the company behind it, Futuremark, has just been acquired by Underwriters Laboratories. Underwriters Laboratories is a safety testing organization, based in the US with offices in 46 countries, which analyzes the safety of technological products and their components.

General Manager of UL's Consumer Technology Division, Stephen Kirk, talked about the acquisition: "Embedded software is now an important part of product design. With an increased focus on mobility, we see more and more products being connected, making the Internet of Things a reality. Consequently, software quality is a significant driver of product safety and performance; and we believe that benchmarking is an important way to help our customers to improve the performance of their products". He continued: "This acquisition provides us with an opportunity to build a new business line in testing a wide variety of technological devices so they offer the performance, safety and privacy that consumers expect".

What does UL have planned for future Futuremark products? We should see more professionally-orientated packages, similar to what PCMark's suite offers. Futuremark's Chief Executive, Jukka Mäkinen, said: "In recent years, we've expanded on to new platforms, our software has been adopted by the European Commission and national governments, and we've welcomed more of the world's leading technology companies into our Benchmark Development Program. We've accomplished a lot on our own, but with UL, we're in an even better position to achieve our goals".