Nest Labs, partners with Google Inc., has made the decision of making its platform accessible to outside developers. This is regarded as a huge step thermostat and smoke-detector in order to gain traction in a very crowded market and become the operating system for devices in homes that are connected to the internet. Nest will allow its users to communicate with different appliances of the house that are manufactured by Whirlpool Corp, with remote controls manufactured by Logitech International SA and cars made by Daimler AG’s Mercedes Benz. Google is also a part of Nest as Google Now, the personal digital assistant of the search engine giant is used for setting the temperature on a thermostat of Nest automatically when a user is detected.
Only limited user information will be shared by Nest with its other partners like Google and for every device, users will have to opt in. This statement was made by Matt Rogers, the co-founder of Nest labs. Partners will be permitted to link their applications and software with Nest thermostat giving it the role of information and control hub for devices in and around the house. New Whirlpool dryers and washers will be alerted by Nest when homeowners go out, which will signal them into switching on modes that will ward off wrinkles and mold.
Nest’s thermostat will also alert when homeowners leave for vacation and will make the light bulbs turn on and off automatically to give the appearance that someone is home. Google and its rivals are competing for getting control of the home as computing devices move beyond smartphones and become more and more mobile moving into everyday sensors and objects. It has been predicted that by the year 2022, most of the households that have an internet connection will be the owner of at least one smart-home device.
This doesn’t include gaming consoles, set-top boxes and connected TVs. Apple Inc. is a tough competitor of Google in this area as the firm recently unveiled HomeKit that will allow iPhone users to control door locks, lights and thermostat settings with their phone. Startups are also emerging such as Quirky, which is introducing Wink, an operating system specially designed for home-connected devices. No proper application has been introduced as yet for connected homes and players in home security will have the advantage in this regard.
However, there is still room for new entrants such as Nest, Wink and Apple if they make the move now. Nest is better positioned for dominating the market because it cannot just make its own devices, but also introduce its own operating system that could run a variety of gadgets made by other firms. A similar approach was implemented by Google Inc. in regard to its Android operating system which is now used for powering majority of the smartphones that are sold worldwide. Nest’s move to become accessible to outside developers has been regarded as a positive one because it gives the platform a chance to become much more powerful this way.