The 4 Battles Shaping the Future of the Connected Home

EDINBURGH, Scotland, May 20, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

The latest research from Delta-ee identifies the future of the connected home market will be shaped by four battles:

1. To become the reference radio and communication protocol;
2. Between the different ways to make devices interact with each other in absence of true interoperability;
3. For having a fixed in-home device which will replace the cloud in absence of internet in the house;
4. To be at the centre of the house by providing an IoT platform.

For example, we see that WiFi is in a strong position to be a winning connected home communication protocol. WiFi is backed up by a strong mobile industry, where billions of devices come with it, while the upcoming connected home radios have yet to demonstrate they can reach such scale. In the meantime WiFi chips will remain much cheaper than competitors. WiFi devices also don't require a gateway to connect to the cloud, which is another advantage as this extra white box can be costly, hardly upgradable and seen as unnecessary in the eyes of the customer.

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Arthur Jouannic, Senior Analyst at Delta-ee said: "Platforms with gateways such as Google/Nest or Samsung/Smart Things will need to justify the cost of this extra device. It will have to be able to run all the connected devices of the house at times when the internet connection is lost, to store information, download and process apps."

As the market develops, open platforms and better interoperability between devices will be required to develop the Internet of Things. Arthur added: "Customers will buy devices from different manufacturers and will expect them to work with each other. If some platforms like Google and Apple are likely to remain top-end walled-garden approaches, interesting developments have been made recently with Allseen and Open-Interconnect. We expect that both approaches will have a role but in different parts of the market."

This research comes from Delta-ee's Connected Home Service and the 'Infrastructure' report which is now available to subscribers - more information is available from http://www.delta-ee.com.

Note for editors: 

• The Delta-ee Connected Home Service is a syndicated, subscription service providing:
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About Delta-ee  

Delta-ee (http://www.delta-ee.com) is a specialist distributed energy and heat research and consulting company. Headquartered in Edinburgh and with offices in England, Germany, Netherlands and Denmark. Our clients comprise many of Europe's leading utilities; heating appliance manufacturers; controls companies; policy makers; telcos, home insurance companies and investors.  Delta-ee provides a range of subscription research services, consultancy and specialist Summits.