Apple Joins the Standards Organization to Compete with Amazon and Google in Smart Home

Smart home is growing rapidly in the United States. Due to many factors such as the living environment of American families and the strong DIY ability of American users, the demand for smart cameras, smart temperature control, smart lighting, smart door locks and smart speakers is increasing sharply. Especially under the mode of combining artificial intelligence assistants and smart speakers, the American smart home market is further activated. Relevant data show that, As early as last year, the penetration rate of smart home in the United States was as high as 58%.

Apple is the first mobile phone manufacturer to invade the smart home field. According to Yang Jianyong, a senior person in the Internet of things, Apple launched the homekit smart home platform in 2014. By accessing third-party smart devices and using smart terminals such as iPhone, it can control all devices in the home scene. However, apple did not reap this wave of dividends. On the contrary, Amazon products and services entered tens of millions of families. According to the data, the cumulative number of smart speakers in the United States alone was as high as 50 million, becoming a popular consumer electronic product at present. Amazon smart speakers firmly occupied 70% of the market share and became the biggest winner because Amazon echo was successful in the U.S. market, Therefore, smart speakers have become the standard hardware of several major American technology giants.

From the perspective of the competition pattern in the United States, Amazon and Google are far ahead of other competitors, and their operation modes are roughly the same. Only because Amazon echo / Alexa entered the market earlier and seized most of the share, Google, as a timely follow-up, also gained 24% of the market share in the United States. They almost monopolize the U.S. market, leaving few opportunities for latecomers, Including Microsoft and Harman Caton's cooperation in launching the invoke smart speaker equipped with Cortana voice assistant, we haven't heard much news. Even apple, which has a strong brand, doesn't have ideal shipments of homepod smart speakers.

Obviously, apple lags too far behind in this competition and is a catcher. However, because Apple has a strong brand appeal in the world and has more than one billion fruit powder, it is regarded as the strongest competitor of Amazon and Google. With the official launch of Apple's homepod smart speaker this year, it has achieved a sales of 3 million units in the United States, This data comes from CIRP, a market research organization.

However, in the battle among the three giants over smart speakers, artificial intelligence voice assistant and ecological resources have become the key. Amazon has Amazon Alexa, Google has Google assistant and apple has Siri. However, Siri's IQ has been criticized and is inferior to its competitors. In particular, Amazon is highly praised in Amazon Alexa. Nearly half of potential smart home buyers mainly consider whether they are compatible with Amazon echo / Alexa. Major equipment manufacturers around the world also embed and support Amazon Alexa to enhance their global market competitiveness with the help of Amazon ecology.

In the smart home competition, apple doesn't seem to have much time left. Although Apple has a good strategy, such as the combination of homekit homepod Apple TV Siri, and IOS has its own smart home entrance, as well as more than 1 billion user groups around the world, fruit powder uses the iPhone's own home entrance, or Siri can control various smart devices in the home. However, in the extremely fierce dispute over the entrance of smart home, Apple's process is slow, and the number of smart hardware joining Apple's smart home ecology is not large, which restricts apple.

Now, in order to promote the progress of its smart home, Apple has joined the industry standard organization thread group (thread group), which was founded under the leadership of nest under Google, including arm, NXP and Samsung. Thread aims to establish a safe and reliable protocol for home Internet of things devices, and also attracts the participation of Qualcomm, Amazon and other companies, Jointly promote the development of animal networking industry.

Apple joined the thread group. Obviously, in order to promote the development of homekit smart home platform, make it easier for more device manufacturers to join homekit ecology, and promote Apple's smart home strategy, Amazon has invaded many American families. With apple joining the Internet of things industry organization, although it can improve its smart home competitiveness, But it is still difficult to counter attack Amazon and apple in the battle for smart speakers. After all, when most users buy smart home products, they prefer Amazon and Google ecology. Secondly, the high price of homepod is also hard injury. Maybe cook can place his hopes on Chinese fruit powder.