Apple, Google and Amazon team up to make smart homes smarter, easier

Tech giants to work together on a new smart home tech standard for different device makers

Apple, Google and Amazon said Wednesday they will begin working together in a new partnership intended to make smart home technologies easier to develop and use.

The three tech giants, along with the Zigbee Alliance, a developer of smart home technology standards, announced the formation of a group called Project Connected Home over IP. The companies said the purpose of the group will be to streamline smart home products so that they work together regardless of what company makes a particular device.

“The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development for manufacturers and increase compatibility for consumers,” the group said in a statement posted to Apple’s website. “The project is built around a shared belief that smart home devices should be secure, reliable, and seamless to use.”

The move amounts to a truce of sorts between Apple, Amazon and Google, as each company has made inroads into smart home technologies with varying degrees of success. Amazon, with its line of Echo devices, is common in many households, while Google’s Google Home devices and Apple’s HomeKit are seen as playing catch up to Amazon’s dominance inn the smart home market. Amazon also already uses smart home tech standards developed by the Zigbee Alliance.

“Zigbee is already used in all types of applications and standardizing around it will simplify customer choices when buying products that need to connect to many new products and services these three companies will bring to market in the future,” said Tim Bajarin, director of tech consultancy Creative Strategies. “This is actually a smart move by Apple, Amazon and Google. They did not need to each re-invent their own communication protocols and cause confusion and force customers to have to buy into three different standards.”

The group said that its planned connectivity standard will work with existing technologies, and that device manufacturers should continue to develop products that use the technologies currently available. Companies in the Zigbee Alliance that will align with the new standard include Ikea, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric and NXP Semiconductors.