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HomePod

The Smart Home Weekly: HomeKit’s Big Week & The Debut of HomePod

Each week I look at the biggest story in smart home and give context to what’s happening in the connected home around the web.

This was the most important week for HomeKit since Apple announced it in June 2014.

That’s because, on Monday the company announced a host of critical updates to their smart home protocol and, just as importantly, launched their new wireless smart speaker/HomeKit hub, the HomePod.

Long rumored, the HomePod is what most of us thought it would be: a wireless speaker with built-in Siri. But with this announcement, Apple filled in many of the holes and showed us exactly how they plan to fight back against Amazon and Google in the digital home.

One thing is clear: Apple is leading with music, telling us that the HomePod will revolutionize home music. With HomePod and the launch of AirPlay 2 with multiroom audio, Apple is going directly after the Sonos consumer.  The device, which costs $349, is an impressive piece of hardware, with seven tweeters, six microphones for far-field listening and its own A8 processor.

It was also a big week for HomeKit. Apple’s long-gestating smart home protocol had its biggest week since it debuted at WWDC in 2014. And while the HomePod – a dedicated HomeKit hub – was the main attraction of the day, Apple made some important announcements about HomeKit itself:

Software authentication – At WWDC this week, Apple indicated they will now allow HomeKit hardware makers to create products without the dedicated chip. This is important because one of the reasons the slow rollout of HomeKit was the requirement of an MFI security chip in each HomeKit device. All that said, given Apple’s strong focus on security, there’s no doubt that the new software authentication will be very robust and HomeKit partners will have to work hard to get software-based authentication through the HomeKit certification process.

NFC and QR code pairing: Apple wants to make HomeKit set up experience easier. NFC and QR code pairing will go a long way towards doing just that.

HomeKit is opening up to anyone with developers license: Before this move, a company had to be a member of Apple’s MFI third party hardware program. Now, Apple is opening the doors to HomeKit to anyone who is an Apple developer. This will greatly increase the number of smart people innovating around the framework.

The Smart Home Show

This week’s episode of the Smart Home Show is all about Apple’s HomePod and HomeKit. Have a listen below:

New From Around The (Smart Home) Web:

Samsung Combo Wireless Mesh Router/SmartThings Hub Available for Pre-Order: Samsung put its mesh router/Smart Things hub up for preorder. The new Connect Home comes with a built in SmartThings hub with Z-Wave and Zigbee radios and built-in mesh Wi-Fi. At this point, the mesh Wi-Fi market is becoming crowded, but the combo of smart home hub and mesh is a nice differentiator for Samsung and makes them comparable in feature set to to the Almond 3 mesh router/smart home hub.

Unikey Gets More $: One of the original Bluetooth smart lock technology providers, Unikey, has received another round of funding, bringing in $5 million from two private equity firms, adding to other strategic investors such as Samsung Ventures. What’s interesting here is the company looks like they’re going to use the capital to expand further into the pro/commercial lock space and new markets like automotive. When I talked to Unikey CEO Phil Dumas on the very first Smart Home Show, he talked back then about possibly expansion into automotive.

Samsung Rumored To Be Working on Smart Speaker: Of course they are. In a way, the key battle in the digital home is not for the home router or set-top box, but now its for the interface, and it seems the smart speaker is becoming the default form factor and device to act as that key interface. Samsung’s version of a smart speaker will be powered by Bixby, the company’s voice assistant technology. Is this a good idea? In theory. I mean, it makes sense for a company like Samsung to create their own, but as always with Samsung and the connected home its about execution.

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Analysis: With HomePod, Apple May Finally Deliver On The Promise Of HomeKit

After months of rumors, Apple finally introduced a wireless streaming speaker called HomePod this week, their first new hardware product since the Apple Watch debuted in 2015.  The Siri-enabled wireless speaker also doubles as a HomeKit powered smart home hub, giving Apple a new fixed HomeKit control point beyond Apple TV. The HomePod will ship in December and is priced at $349.

There is a bunch to break down here, including the HomePod compares to Amazon’s Echo, but let’s first look at what exactly Apple introduced.

The Hardware

The new HomePod is an impressive piece of hardware. The HomePod includes Apple’s A8 chip, a system-on-chip CPU/GPU that debuted in 2014 with the iPhone 6. It has a six-microphone array with advanced echo cancellation, which Apple says will enable “Siri to understand people whether they are near the device or standing across the room, even while loud music is playing.”  The Siri-powered speaker also features seven beam-forming tweeters, each with an amplifier, and it also includes what Apple calls room-sensing technology that allows the device to optimize its sound based on the specific spatial characteristics of where music is being played.

During the event, Apple made a string of other important announcements that led up to the climactic debut of the HomePod:

AirPlay2

One of the most important foundational technology upgrades announced Monday was AirPlay 2, a much-needed update to Apple’s wireless streaming protocol. With Airplay 2 we finally get multiroom audio support, a huge upgrade that will allow homes with Apple’s HomePod – as well as products from partners like Bose, Bang & Olufsen, Marantz and others – to stream audio wirelessly to different rooms and to multiple speakers. The upgrade puts Apple’s streaming music framework on par with Google’s Chromecast for audio, which already supports multiroom audio.

Apple’s AirPlay 2 Early Partners. Image credit: The Verge

A notable absence from the list of initial partners was Sonos, a company that almost single-handedly created the wireless multiroom audio category.

HomeKit

The release of AirPlay 2 will not only bring multiroom audio support, but it also adds speakers to the list of devices controllable with Apple’s smart home protocol, HomeKit. By adding the speaker category to HomeKit, consumers will be able to control their wireless speakers through the iOS Home app.

The arrival of the HomePod also brings a second fixed smart home hub device into the lineup. Like Apple TV, the HomePod allows for remote access to any HomeKit compatible device through the Home app. However, with far-field listening capabilities and integrated Siri, the HomePod instantly surpasses Apple TV to become Apple’s most capable smart home hub.

What Does All This Mean?

The pricing, capabilities, industrial design and messaging gave us all we need to know to break down Apple’s strategy:

The HomePod Is, Above All, A Music Product: The HomePod is built to be a great wireless streaming speaker. With seven beam-forming tweeters – that’s one more sound driver than the Sonos Play 5 – it’s built to sound great. Sure, the HomePod has built-in Siri, but Apple messaged this as a revolutionary multi-room speaker first and a virtual assistant second.

This Is a Premium Product : The price of the HomePod, $349, may seem fairly affordable when compared to other Apple products, but at roughly double the price of the Amazon Echo and nearly triple that of Google Home, this is a much higher priced than other smart speakers.  It’s clear Apple has Sonos, probably moreso than Amazon or Google, in its crosshairs.

Apple Is Finally Bringing An Upgraded Siri Home: One of the messages from Apple this week is Siri has finally grown up. By adding anticipatory computer features, opening it up further to developers with a year two SiriKit and creating a Siri face for Apple Watch, the company finally feels they have a virtual assistant on par with Google Assistant. And now with HomePod, Apple has a true voice assistant to bring into the home.

Apple Vs. Amazon

Where does this position Apple relative to Amazon and the Echo?

I think given the premium pricing strategy, Apple appears to be ceding the fixed smart speaker mass market to Amazon. By choosing a music-first, premium approach, Apple appears content to let Amazon win the numbers battle with its lower-cost smart speaker.

However, letting Amazon blanket the mass market with $49 Echo Dots does not mean Apple is ceding the virtual assistant market to Amazon. In fact, if we learned anything this week it’s that Apple plans to leverage the hundreds of millions of Siri-powered iPhones, iPads and Apple Watchs in the market as it does battle with Alexa. .

And not only is Apple leading with iOS, but they plan to make it a much more rich and robust platform with new efforts like ARkit, their new augmented reality developer platform. Imagine pairing a well-done augmented reality app with a voice assistant capability in the home, and you might have something pretty cool.

Ok, so while it’s a bit of a risky strategy, it’s probably the right one for Apple. By ‘dancing with one who brought them’ in iOS and augmenting their home strategy with a premium-priced smart speaker/virtual assistant for the home with HomePod, Apple now at least has a strategy to do battle with Echo, even if their new smart speaker is priced out of reach for some consumers.

Lastly, let’s not forget that the HomePod with HomeKit is a true smart home hub, with all the built-in intelligence to make a powerful Apple-powered smart home come to life. While the Amazon Echo has done an good job integrating with hundreds of various smart home devices through its skill platform, it’s limited in its ability to execute on things such as scenes. With HomeKit and a new rev of the Home app for iOS, I think Apple may finally have what it needs with the HomeKit-HomePod combo to deliver on the early promise that had so many excited about HomeKit.

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