Apple wants to create a smart home ecosystem, similar to how SmartThings and Nest Labs, owned by Google, picture the smart home revolution happening in the next few years, with a few additional iOS touches.
Home automation is definitely a prosperous market, even if sustainable income has not been thought of yet, the initial hardware could cost hundreds to do one thing in the household, with the ability to offer dozens of devices to buyers.
The platform will be announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference on June 2. The conference will allow Apple time to gain developer interest, as they want developers to create applications and hardware for the ecosystem, which will go through quality checks similar to iOS apps.
Apple’s main hub for the smart home platform will be on the iPhone. We could see automation work through Siri, allowing the user to voice command to open the garage, turn on the lights, boil the kettle and other small ideas that make a users life integrated.
The inclusion of third party developers is interesting and this might not be the last time we see Apple open out their arms to third parties this year. It is said Siri will become integrated into third party apps much easier and iCloud will get a redesign to offer more services to third party developers.
Smart home is still in the baby stages, Nest Labs has shown us there can be home safety tools that people actually want, built to a standard Apple could approve. We need to see if miscellaneous automation tools can become a profitable business, not a niche like it is today.
Apple has the resources to make a smart home platform become mainstream, all they have to do is offer the platform to users and developers in a way that inspires creativity and they will flock to Apple, opening another market.
