The Smart Home Mess
I often write about the smart home mess, criticizing those in the industry. That’s sad, because they often develop technologies that can help seniors or people with disabilities live independently and safely at home. I also criticize the media and marketers for their excessive hype and for ignoring the smart home mess.
The Smart Home Mess
Today’s post is a response to The Mess at Nest Echoes the Mess in the Smart Home, a Forbes article by Stacey Higginbotham. The most insightful quote from this article is:
“The smart home, for better or worse, is an ecosystem. And so far, most companies are trying to make it a platform.”
My Response:
Even a SMART Home ecosystem, if it targets DIY consumers, is not very smart and will likely fail to reach mass market adoption. That’s because it puts Consumer’s in the role of systems integrator, in a complex ecosystem with competing standards and retail confusion.
No one seems to realize that SMART Home market needs to become a Smart HOME ecosystem [note the emphasis change] that targets homebuilders instead. But builders have been slow to promote smart home technologies. Instead, they emphasize features that buyers notice in their model homes — like marble & wood floors, granite counters, rounded corners, and Moën faucets.
Homebuilders pay less attention to infrastructure, including engineered foundations, plumbing, wiring, and networking, because buyers don’t notice it, and because their sales staff lacks the ability to sell it. As they’ve learned, demonstrating the value proposition of a smart home ecosystem and devices is just as difficult in model homes as in retail stores like BestBuy.
So what happens when someone buys a Smart HOME and collects dozens of smart devices that work with the ecosystem, and then they later move? Can they take their stuff with them? Will it even work in another home without the same ecosystem? Will buyers of the old home even want the advanced tech if the stuff they have (from a different ecosystem) wont work with it? Or will they rip out the smart devices as they did when I sold my last fully automated home?
Why the Internet-of-Things might never speak a common language
In his FastCompany article, Why the Internet-of-Things might never speak a common language, Jared Newman did a great job describing the networking mess that’s holding the Smart Home market back. I commented on that article too, saying that the problem of competing network standards is rooted in the heterogeneous nature of the home and the many devices inside that have completely different networking needs. Some need high bandwidth and low latency for video streaming while others don’t really need bandwidth but instead need wireless connections with enough range to cover an entire house, even if the requisite transmit power consumes battery life. Other devices (e.g. door knobs) need long battery life because there’s no access to power mains or recharging adapters. And then, while many devices can benefit from talking to other devices in the home, they have no need to connect to the Internet or don’t want to.
Lastly, how important to the smart home is the smart phone? Immensely, I’d argue, but the phone has a limited set of radios (3G/4G/5G cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth). ZigBee and Z-Wave have almost no chance of making it into the phone, so I don’t see much future for these standards or the latest replacement: Matter.
The Elusive Smart Home
It helps to question marketing hype promoting the Smart Home, with its integrated IoT sensors & devices, because mass-market adoption of that vision has eluded manufacturers for over 50 years. And that market seems even more disjointed today than when RCA-Whirlpool demonstrated their Miracle Kitchen at the 1957 World’s Fair. Compare the video of that demo with a similar vision video from CES 2016 at https://mhealthtalk.com/elusive-smart-home/.
Unfortunately, none of the companies in the Smart Home space seem to know what it will take to make this a mass market. Not Amazon, and not Apple, Google, IBM, Intel, LG, Microsoft, Philips, Qualcomm, Samsung, or Sony. Everyone wants to control the device interface, the user interface, the application layer, or the network hub, but none of them will, because they don’t see it as an ecosystem, and they’re targeting the wrong customer — consumers rather than builders.
With Criticism Comes Optimism
The fact that two important articles appeared this week (from FORBES and FastCompany) to criticize the Smart Home market initiatives so far is, I think, an important step toward addressing problems and moving the market forward. But as I’ve also written, I don’t see this becoming a mass market any time soon. It will take decades and more insight among executives than I’ve seen so far. Still, I’m optimistic, because even point-products can have benefits in specific areas, and if selected carefully, they can help support eldercare before ever becoming standard features in homes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wayne Caswell is a retired IBM technologist, futurist, market strategist, consumer advocate, sleep economist, and founding editor of Modern Health Talk. With international leadership experience developing wireless networks, sensors, and smart home technologies, he’s been an advocate for Big Broadband and fiber-to-the-home while also enjoying success lobbying for consumers. Wayne leans left to support progressive policies but considers himself politically independent. (contact & BIO)