You Don't Own What You Buy Episode 9,000: Philips' Light Bulbs Lose Functionality

from the I'm-sorry-I-can't-do-that,-Dave dept

One of the common themes here at Techdirt over the last decade is how in the digital and internet-connected era, the very meaning of "ownership" and "property" has changed -- often for the worse. In the broadband-connected era, firmware updates can often eliminate functionality promised to you at launch, as we saw with the Sony Playstation 3. And with everything now relying on internet-connectivity, companies can often give up on supporting devices entirely, often leaving users with very expensive paperweights as we saw after Google acquired Revolv.

The latest example of this phenomenon comes courtesy of Philips, who this week announced it would be discontinuing its support of the first generation of its Hue Bridge on April 29. The Bridge is the heart of Philips' internet-connected lighting system, helping you manage all of the fancy new "smart" light bulbs you've installed around the house. And while the decision won't "brick" the hardware as we've seen from other companies, it will erode overall functionality of the platform, preventing them from connecting to the internet (the entire point):

"Philips won’t brick the original Hue Bridges, but it will stop updating their software. That means the Bridges, and the lights they’re connected to, will no longer be able to use any of Philips’ online services, which is, of course, one of the whole purposes of buying the lights in the first place.

When users began asking why this was necessary, Philips flatly indicated that the company wanted to focus on supporting newer models of the same platform:

>> The V1 Bridge no longer has the resources to guarantee the evolution of the Hue system - from compatibility, speed and security. We want to be able to dedicate more time and effort to maintaining and developing the current bridge and system. — Philips Hue (@tweethue) March 6, 2020

The company also insisted this new version of the bridge would be "future proof":

Hi Bogdan, thank you for your message. We have designed the Bridge V2 to be future proof. We actually decided to eventually discontinue further software updates and online services for the Hue Bridge v1, in order to focus on supporting our Hue Bridge v2 ecosystem. — Philips Hue (@tweethue) March 6, 2020

Which of course isn't true. In a few years the company will move on from that product as well, leaving many users with "smart" hardware that slowly bleeds functionality until it's a shadow of its original marketing promises. Worse, as these products fall out of support, they often stop receiving essential security updates, putting users, and the internet in general, at risk.

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Filed Under: end of life, hue, hue bridge, iot, ownership, property rights, smart homes, smart lightbulbs

Companies: philips