for years now, the whole smarthome/homeautomation topic was only a topic for my free time outside work, but I’m currently trying to get a better understanding if that field would also potentially be interesting for me as something to work in for a living. A lot of (especially big) companies mainly focus their efforts on cloud-only solutions, and as for me the local-only/first philosophy of HA is a big thing, I’m trying to get a better understanding of the motivations of bigger companies. A few things I can come up with myself, and I’m currently trying to get some conversations going with some of those bigger companies to understand their reasoning “first hand”, but in the meantime I’d be curious what you think (or know) about why “cloud only” is currently the way to go for a lot of companies.
What I came up with so far:
Less effort and risk: when you want/need to offer a cloud-based solution anyway (because company strategy), then putting additonal effort (and an increased risk for things breaking and creating support cases) into an on-top local approach will cost you money, and potentially reputation if things don’t work out.
Small target group: compared to the millions and millions of people who have a smartphone and a washing machine and just want things to work, the core group of “privacy first” people is a very small one. Every Euro/Dollar spent there is therefore a less attractive investment. (Also: the group of “local ONLY” people is even smaller. How many HA users, me included, in the end “give up” and do install that integration that is built around the cloud api of the vendor, and how many are left who don’t?)
User lock-in: anything that needs an account and gets people used to your own app creates a certain lock-in effect. The strength of HA (allowing people to freely choose devices and integrations and vendors) is actually a disadvantage for a company from that perspective
Cross-selling: the app that tells your endusers that their dishwasher is done can easily advertise the “perfect” dishwasher soap from your business partner => additional revenue
Up-selling: when you know that a household bought a washing machine and a dishwasher from your brand, you can use the contact to that enduser to advertise the perfectly fitting clothes dryer. And in the (very) long run, the moment you know that the device is broken beyond repair, you can offer a discount for a replacement device, as you are the one who knows first that it’s broken, even before the owner knows
User/usage data: understanding your client is super important, but anyone who buys an IKEA lightbulb in cash and then at home connects it to a zigbee stick and HA stays invisible to you. As a company you need to understand your customers to make decisions around where you want to go with your smarthome efforts.
Easier development and iteration: with a cloud/app approach, the moment you implemented a cool new feature you can easily role it out to everyone, as long as they are connected to an appstore. Reaching users who use a local interface (and therefore convincing them that you built a really cool thing and that you are a top brand) is way harder and in a lot of cases simply impossible.
Those are the first and obvious ones that came to mind for me, what else can you think of? I’d be curious
It’s kind of a combination of parts of things already mentioned, but Planned Obsolescence might deserve a spot on the list… a company that locks in users and tracks what devices people own is well situated to figure out the rate at which they can “sunset” older devices and still have the majority of those users purchase their new devices as replacements. New devices that are minimal “upgrades” of previously developed devices are easier and cheaper to produce than the R&D for completely new devices to solve previously unsolved problems.
Also, even if unofficial firmware exists to keep a device working, most users are either unable or unwilling to find it and upload it… and some companies push updates knowing that they will brick devices completely.
I get your point, let’s for a moment assume that would be a factor: even devices that provide a local interface do their firmware updates via an internet connection. Your planned bricking of a device would therefore be independent from how the device can be interfaced with by the user.
Also: bricking a fully working device ALWAYS creates bad press, I cannot imagine that this plays a big role outside of edgecase considerations to be honest.
If you sell a product that works completely locally, you lose control to modify the product in the future. If you require cloud, then you have the power to modify the software and its behavior at any time. Most importantly, you can add a paywall or increase the cost at any time. Missing your quarterly revenue target? Raise the monthly subscription $1.
It’s that simple.
Adobe showed the business world the path, and many companies are eagerly embracing it.
Do you have an example of a company within the home automation scope where controlling/monitoring it via an app requires a subscription? I get your adobe example for standalone software, but i cant think of a smarthome company in the scope of my original post
Ah, good one, thanks. They do check those boxes indeed, although I have to admit that especially stuff like video availability and face detection does create costs for storage and processing power. From what I found at least the bare functionality of opening/closing a gate and to view the live image of the camera is still free.
After visiting this years IFA (huge electronics trade fair in Berlin), and talking to a few people from household appliance companies, it turned out there are 2 (or 3) additional reasons which I didn’t have on the radar:
reduction of costly maintenance work: having a technician driving to someones home whose device has an issue is expensive. Companies are using their cloud connections (and the apps that the endclients use) to narrow down issues BEFORE they have to send someone, and sometimes even fix them without having to send someone in the first place. My washing machine is actually the best/worst example for that: we bought it juuuuuust before wifi connection was the default, so in order for a firmware issue to be fixed that caused the machine to falsely go into error mode from time to time, the company had to send a technician over. With a cloud connection they could have fixed that remotely via an automatic firmware update.
spare part management: easy to replace spare parts (which can be replaced by the endusers themselves) which need changing from time to time can be easier sold via the app. The app knows when the part is at the end of its lifetime, and can directly propose to trigger an order.
And one reason that is kind of based on how companies dealt with their own devices in the past:
“real-world” explanations for company-issued error codes: that’s something I saw in action at the booth of Miele. Traditionally, bigger household appliances like washing machines internally use rather cryptic error codes (F66, …), which in some cases dont even have a clear 1:1 connection to what exactly needs to be done to fix things. Nudging endusers to go via their app, they can narrow things down from a generic error code to something like “try cleaning this one certain filter behind the bottom cover” => again less maintenance/support effort for the company.
I think this one is key. But expand it to include all support. Lock the user’s hardware down so the user can’t change/tinker with anything, then add a way for your own tech people to remotely access and diagnose it. Cuts way down on the nuisance calls where nothing is really broken, just user error.
I hate this approach. But I have to admit I did something very similar when I was supporting tens of thousands of desktop workstations for large company. Apple is another example of taking this to the extreme. And you can’t argue with their success. Most people like a hands-off approach to their tech. It’s just us DIY’ers and tinkerers who hate it.
Or, in the case of one place I called recently, have all support calls go to a third-party, off-shore call center. I knew I was in trouble when the first thing they asked when I called was what company’s products I was calling about.
