“There’s a quiet storm brewing in the home automation space,” Chris Neiger writes for The Motley Fool. “While some companies are striving to create products that will allow users to adjust the thermostat with their tablet or unlock the doors with their smartphone, Apple and Qualcomm have set their sites on creating platforms that will allow all of those devices to communicate with each other.”
“Though the home automation sector — part of the larger Internet of Things — is poised to take off, there are currently no set standards for getting third party devices to communicate with each other,” Neiger writes. “Apple and Qualcomm both want to change that, and Microsoft just joined Qualcomm’s alliance to help beat out the iMaker.”
“Apple announced its HomeKit platform — which helps third-party home automation devices work together — just last month,” Neiger writes. “But back in December an alliance was built around Qualcomm’s standard language for Internet of Things devices, called AllJoyn. This group of companies known as the AllSeen Alliance includes Haier, LG, Panasonic and other… Earlier this week Microsoft decided to join the alliance, which is the first major mobile consumer tech company to sign up. While Google’s Nest just launched its own open platform for home automation and Apple is building HomeKit, Microsoft is throwing its weight behind AllJoyn. The company’s presence in AllSeen is significant because it could point to how future Windows devices interact with home automation.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Any home automation scheme that doesn’t work well with iPhone and iPad is DOA. And, the home automation solution that will work best with the devices that the vast majority of affluent homeowners use, iPhone and iPad, will be Apple’s. Period.
It would take several concurrent acts of God to derail Apple’s HomeKit plans.