Amazon, Apple, Google Lead Effort to Develop Smart Home Standard

The Zigbee Alliance encouraged industrywide participation in a new smart home working group spearheaded by the alliance’s board, along with Amazon, Apple and Google. Absent in Wednesday's announcement was the Z-Wave platform, with 2,400 smart home products on 100 million devices. Project Connected Home over IP “welcomes device manufacturers, silicon providers, and other developers from across the smart home industry to participate in and contribute to the standard,” it said. The Z-Wave Alliance didn’t comment. The WG plans to develop and promote adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard to increase compatibility among smart home products. It highlighted participating Zigbee Alliance board member companies including Ikea, NXP Semiconductors, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) and Silicon Labs as joining the WG. Control4 that's based on the Zigbee protocol wasn’t highlighted. Charlie Kindel, chief product and technology officer of parent SnapAV, emailed us that Control4 remains committed to Zigbee and the alliance. “For the promise of the smart home to be realized, companies big and small will need to deliver a seamless, secure and ever-reliable experience,” said Kindel.