This article was taken from the June 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
While striving for innovation, the world of technology is almost Darwinian in what does -- and doesn't -- survive. Sputnik vs Apollo. Cassette vs 8-track. VHS vs Betamax. Remember HD DVD? Toshiba (which lost about £640 million when Blu-ray took off) certainly does.
With home automation ready to hit the mainstream, and judging by the number of products in this category at this year's Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas in January, a new battle of the brands is underway: Google vs Apple. With both multi-billion-pound corporations vying to become industry-standard for the internet of things, what plays out in the next couple of years will draw the map for smart-home technology for generations to come.
Yet one question remains: why aren't these appliances already the norm? "Home automation's been around since the 80s, but was very expensive, and targeted at the highest end of the market," notes Colin Calder, founder and CEO of home-energy management company PassivSystems. "There's got to be a compelling value proposition for consumers, and to a large extent that's not been great enough."
Ironically, it's the lack of a monopoly in home automation that's slowed its progress. Although dozens of manufacturers produce cutting-edge products, their tech has largely been unable to talk to each other, creating a lack of usability for high-street customers. "One of the reasons home automation is still in its infancy, in many ways, is that the consumer was not the focus," admits Lionel Guicherd-Callin, head of European product marketing at Nest Labs. "It was not focused on making the complex simple." But with Nest Labs -- a smart-home brand best known for bringing a self-learning thermostat to market, and subsequently purchased by Google for $3.2 billion (£2bn) in January 2014 -- little time has been wasted in trying to address the issue of inter-device communication.
Forging an industry alliance of more than 60 companies (including Samsung), its networking protocol, Thread, allows manufacturers to create products that can connect to a low-power mesh with internet, Bluetooth and cloud capabilities. "We feel that's going to be the first step in having a unified, object-to-object wireless communication," claims Guicherd-Callin. "It works with Wi-Fi in customers' homes and with the Bluetooth in their pocket."
Andy Griffiths, Samsung Electronics' UK and Ireland managing director, agrees. "For the internet of things to succeed we need more than devices and components. We need an open IoT ecosystem where the "things" can communicate with one another, regardless of manufacturer."
He has a point. Just take a look at Panasonic's smart-home gadgets -- out of the box they are unable to talk to any non-Panasonic devices.
But despite the myriad companies joining the Thread way of thinking, it'd be foolish to ignore Apple. Armed with HomeKit -- an iOS 8 framework to put control of your smart home and multiple manufacturers (among them Belkin, Honeywell and General Electric) in the palm of your hand -- the internet of things' momentum could potentially swing Apple's way.
Along with Apple's enviable brand loyalty, it uses Bluetooth, which is already familiar to its iPhone-wielding fans. HomeKit can operate appliances via an iPhone, Apple TV or Siri as an interface, as well as non-HomeKit devices that use competing protocols, such as ZigBee or Z-Wave.
However, HomeKit's bridging capabilities stop short of connecting to the Google-owned Nest Learning Thermostat (Wi-Fi-based security concerns, Apple says). Unfortunately, this means that until such time that the smart-home space race has its "man on the Moon", once again the consumer must pick a side.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
