A Smart Home Butler, not a bunch of connected things

There is a better way to market the Smart Home and consumer IoT. By Cees Links, Founder and CEO, GreenPeak Technologies.

There is a growing undercurrent of industry grumbling and complaining that the IoT and Smart Home revolution seems to be taking a lot longer than it should. Why?

There are several reasons but a key issue has been the infighting among the CE industry behemoths about whose protocols and platforms will be the base of this new technology. How do we make all these things talk to each other? There are many players all battling – and new ones are popping up all the time. This is creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust. As a result, the device makers and the solution providers are confused and don’t know which way to turn.

Whose technology protocols should these manufacturers incorporate into their gear? Should they adopt ZigBee, Apple’s HomeKit, Allseen Alliance/AllJoyn, or Intel’s Open Interconnect Consortium? Other 802.15.4 technologies? There are too many competing choices. Instead, to protect against future technology changes, maybe the device makers should design in wireless connectivity chips and software that will work with a variety of protocols? That’s complicated and expensive.

Also, as you can imagine, if the device, appliance and system developers are confused about future directions, the actual end users and application designers are even more bewildered.

This market battle that is slowing down the adoption of the IoT, has been covered by the various pundits and analysts covering this emerging market.

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