Whoever creates the most compelling platform will not only revolutionize how we live but also command a huge share of what’s expected to be a $12 billion annual business within five years. Much as Google and Yahoo created search engines as a way to bring order to the Internet in the ’90s, startups and established players alike–including Apple, AT&T and Google–are now enabling you to command the Internet of your home. “It’s an exciting time.”īut the race to make those gadgets and sensors work together has only just begun. “We’re really starting to see major volume here,” says Lisa Arrowsmith, an IHS associate director. (Think plugging a desk lamp into an adapter controlled by your phone, or rigging a door with a motion detector that pings you about intruders.) By 2018, the research firm IHS Technology predicts, people will have installed 45 million smart-home services. There’s also been an uptick in the production of sensors and devices that enable you to smartify objects that are dumb. In the past few years, the rise of cloud computing has made it easier than ever to build gadgets that connect to the so-called Internet of Things, meaning they can be monitored and controlled from afar, usually with their own smartphone app. SmartThings, which launched in 2012, has arrived amid a legitimate sea change in home automation. Yet early efforts failed to deliver because of clunky tech and consumer wariness. ![]() If this narrative sounds familiar, that’s because it is: companies have been promising the dawn of the smart home–a futuristic dwelling full of gadgets working seamlessly to satisfy your every whim–since the ’50s.
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