Apple, Google, Amazon eye common standard for smart home devices

December 19, 2019 | 12:18

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Amazon, Apple and Google announced plans Wednesday (Dec 18) to develop a common technology standard for smart home products, in a move aimed at enabling more connected devices to speak to each other.

Apple, Google, Amazon eye common standard for smart home devices (photo: shutterstock)

The move aims to bring together the variety of standards for devices operating on digital assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple's Siri.

The project "aims to improve the consumer experience of trying to use smart home products that aren't compatible with each other", according to a statement by the new working group.

"We believe that the protocol has the potential to be widely adopted across home systems and assistants such as Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, and others."

The new project also includes the Zigbee Alliance, an earlier effort to develop a common wireless standard for connected devices that includes manufacturers such as Samsung, retailers such as Ikea and other tech firms including NXP Semiconductors.

"The industry working group will take an open-source approach for the development and implementation of a new, unified connectivity protocol," the statement said.

"The project intends to use contributions from market-tested smart home technologies from Amazon, Apple, Google, Zigbee Alliance, and others."

AFP

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