Apple, Google & Amazon Join Hands to Make Platform for Smart Homes

This is the first time when all three tech giants are coming together to work on a solution for the consumers.

In an unprecedented move for the technology industry, major brands like Apple, Amazon and even Google among others are joining hands to create a universal platform for smart home devices.

This announcement was made on Wednesday and the joint entity is forming a group called the ‘Project Connected Home Over IP’ which also includes the Zigbee Alliance. The smart home ecosystem is heavily fragmented right now, with most brands catering to their products with unique IPs that are not interoperable.

This has put the onus back on the industry to come out with a solution, that will ensure all the ecosystems can complement each other, making sure you don’t have to invest in products from one brands all the time. “The industry Working Group will take an open-source approach for the development and implementation of a new, unified connectivity protocol,” the group says here.

This development could mean that devices supporting Apple’s HomeKit right now, would work with Amazon’s Alexa and Google’ Weave ecosystem in the near future.

With the internet solutions becoming compatible to run multiple devices across a household, it’s imperative that ecosystem providers, as well as the device makers have a unified goal to focus on.

To make products for the upcoming IP standard, the Zigbee Alliance and its group of companies have been entrusted to be part of the Working Group as well.

For those unaware, the Zigbee Alliance comprises of brands like IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric and Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) among others.

To get things started, the Working Group will release a draft specification and a preliminary reference design for implementing the open source standard by late 2020. The use of open source doesn’t come easy to Apple, and to see them working with Google and Amazon will be interesting.

Having said that, the list doesn’t includes names like Xiaomi and Huawei, both Chinese brands also heavily involved in the smart home ecosystem, but we’re hopeful they’ll soon be part of the Group.