Apple, Google, and Amazon form alliance: Creating a new unified standard for smart homes

Amazon, Google, and Apple reached a rare partnership on Wednesday, aiming to create a new standard for smart homes, making it more convenient for consumers. Currently, Amazon, Google, and Apple are all actively competing for smart home users, but the competition itself has caused confusion and trouble for consumers and manufacturers of smart home products, as consumers must purchase products compatible with their smart home system.

Data released by IDC in September this year shows that the number of smart home devices worldwide will reach nearly 815 million units this year, a year-on-year increase of 23.5%, and this number will grow to 1.39 billion units in 2023. To achieve this market scale, and to keep consumers sane, we need some kind of standard that allows all smart products to interconnect.

This is why three major competitors Apple, Google, and Amazon have joined forces. Today, you might need to buy a smart lock, but first you need to figure out whether the lock is compatible with Amazon Echo (which uses the Zigbee standard) or with Google Home or Apple HomeKit.

The same headache has also extended to companies that make smart devices. They need to decide from the very beginning whether their products will support the Zigbee standard or the Apple or Google standard. After making that decision, they need to continuously update throughout the entire lifecycle of the device to ensure security on all platforms. This time, the new standard that Apple, Google, and Amazon are preparing to jointly create is designed precisely to address the issues mentioned above.

This collaboration, called "Project Connected Home over IP," is dedicated to creating a new standard for the smart home, so that people will know at the time of purchase whether a product is compatible with their home's smart system and whether these products are secure. In the future, a logo will be printed on the packaging of smart home products so that consumers can tell whether it is built and supported by "Project Connected Home over IP."

The three companies stated in a press release: "This project is built on a shared belief that smart home devices should be secure, reliable, and seamless to use. The project is founded on the Internet Protocol (IP) and aims to enable communication among smart home devices, mobile applications, and cloud services, and to define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification."

In addition to Apple, Google, and Amazon, companies from the ZigBee Alliance will also join this collaboration, including Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), IKEA, NXP Semiconductors, and Resideo.

This alliance will initially focus on physical security smart home devices, such as smoke alarms and carbon dioxide sensors, smart door locks, security systems, electrical plugs, curtains, and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) controls, before expanding to other types of devices and commercial solutions.

The alliance plans to release a specification draft and initial open source materials later next year, and it is currently unclear when the first products will hit the market.