More service providers are becoming interested in the opportunity that the smart home gives them to increase loyalty and explore new revenues. But as wereported previously, they are going to face competition from retailers and utilities. Among the recent entries to the smart home field by U.S. retailers, the most notable was the launch of the Staples Connect platform in September 2013.
Staples is the world’s largest office products company and second biggest online retailer after Amazon. In the first instance its entry into the smart home market is a way of bolstering sales of its existing inventory.
According to Bill Ablondi, Director for Smart Home Strategies at the research firm Strategy Analytics, this move is highly significant and a challenge to the prevailing business models of broadband operators based on recurring fees. “That is an interesting approach, highlighting a groundswell among retailers offering smart home capability for a one-off purchase aimed at selling more of their stuff,†he says.
Consumers only have to buy a smart home hub made by Linksys for $99 to access the Staples Connect service. They can then purchase components such as light bulbs and door locks to be monitored or controlled by the system.
Meanwhile, a significant European smart home announcement came from the UK this September when energy utility British Gas announced its Hive platform and the first of a planned series of products called Hive Active Heating. This uses the ZigBee communications protocol to enable consumers to control their boiler systems remotely via mobile phone, tablet or PC. The system enables central heating to be turned on, off, up or down, and hot water temperature to be adjusted.
While British Gas is starting with heating and hot water, building on its core competence, the intention is to expand across the whole home and attract new customers even if they take their energy from other utilities, according to Kassir Hussain, Director of Technology, British Gas Connected Homes.
“It is unclear how things in the smart home sector will pan out,†Hussain says. “We will initially create single products that control one aspect of the home, starting with heating and hot water. Once consumers are more comfortable with these kinds of products, we will look at ways to converge different products to unite many things under one control.â€
The intention is clearly to take on not just other utilities but all providers of smart home services, including broadband operators. The gauntlet has been thrown down.
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This is an excerpt from the new Videonet report, ‘From triple-play to multi-play’, which also looks at how Gigaset AG, the German home electronics vendor spun out of the Siemens Group in 2008 and now Europe’s leader in cordless phones, has made a major play for the smart home by starting with existing customers for DECT systems.
This report takes a look at the emerging smart home market and the potential role for broadband service providers and likely strategies if they want to build upon their existing customer relationships and CPE and migrate from a triple-play to multi-play provider. It covers the smart home opportunities and challenges, competition and differentiation, standards development and consumer perceptions.
The report analyses pioneering service provider efforts like Comcast Xfinity Home, AT&T Digital Life, Deutsche Telekom (and its QIVICON open platform approach) and Telecom Italia. It looks at rival offers and strategies from utilities like British Gas and retailers like Staples and gathers insights from across the smart home ecosystem from the likes of Strategy Analytics, GigaOM, IHS Electronics & Media, ADB, Zonoff, iControl, OSGi Alliance, DLNA and HGI.
