July 19, 2014

This is big news in the IoT space.

Google is using Nest as their IoT hub but it suffers from IMHO two problems. One is that the thermostat is actually flawed in that a single sampling point in one arbitrary location doesn’t make much sense (full disclosure: I am biased as a founder at a smart vent company), but two, and more importantly, it doesn’t have enough radios.

Apple’s HomeKit, also getting started in the thermostat space is too early to really get a sense for the kinds of integrations and system topology that we might expect to see.

SmartThings (competing with Revolve and a few others - including my open source platform https://github.com/dandroid88/webmote, j/k :p) is poised to glue the IoT together within the home and it seems like at 200 Million Samsung is getting a steal. Especially given that Nest was 3.2 Billion… I remember reading that Nest is/was (?) moving 100,000 units a month not too long ago, I don’t know if smart things is anywhere near this number, but with Samsung backing it, it could be a real contender and fast.

One can’t help but wonder where Cisco (Linksys from time to time) and others who have had a hub (complete with web server and embedded linux distro capable hardware…) in every living room for the last 10 years have been, and why they couldn’t see how good of a position they could have been in today…

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