‘Hey Siri, talk to Alexa’: Google, Amazon, and Apple join forces to create universal standard for smart home devices that may help products work TOGETHER
- Tech giants want to make smart home products work more cooperatively
- A project aims to build a common standard used by Google, Amazon, and Apple
- This will allow users to buy and use devices from any ecosystem
- A standard could be developed as soon as ‘late 2020’
- Companies will focus on safety products like cameras and alarms to begin with
Google, Apple, and Amazon may put an end to one of the biggest headaches with setting up smart home devices.
Often times smart products likes speakers, thermostats, or lighting, while individually functional, struggle to work together cooperatively, meaning users are left to untangle the mess of interoperability.
But the the three biggest names in smart home products, as well as several other prominent companies in the field, have formed a team, called the Project Connected Home over IP, designed to build a standard that coheres smart devices via Internet Protocol.
Apple, Amazon, and Google have joined an initiative that aims to create a common standard for smart home products, meaning your Apple Homepod (pictured above) could work with your Amazon Echo
The group, which is managed by the Zigbee Alliance, a coalition that creates open standards fore Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and also includes growing players in the field of smart home products like executives from Ikea and Samsung.
According to them, they could release a standard protocol as early as ‘late 2020.’
If successful, the efforts won’t just make smart home products easier to adopt for consumers, the members say it will also bring down cost and ease of making products for developers ‘by giving them one standard for building their products.’
Just exactly how the standard will manifest could is unknown, but the group will reportedly start by focusing on internet-connected safety products like alarms, door locks, in addition to heating and air conditioning controls.
Google’s Home Mini (pictured above) is among the top selling smart speaker devices and is part of a growing line of voice-assistant-enabled devices
Though Amazon, Google, and Apple are typically bitter rivals in the field of smart home products, especially when it comes to smart speakers, other tech giants have found areas of mutual interest over the last year.
One arena includes interoperability of voice assistants. An initiative launched by Amazon earlier this year aims to make popular voice assistants interchangeable on devices, meaning one could use Apple’s Siri on an Amazon Echo or talk to Google Assistant on Apple’s Homepod.
Already, 30 partners have signed onto the initiative including Microsoft, Spotify, Intel, Qualcomm, Sonos, and Sony.