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Why are so many connected appliances still unconnected?
Many new appliances at home can be connected to the Internet. But that doesn’t mean you have to – and many customers would rather not. Here’s why. Read more…
smart homes
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‘Matter’ will have a limited impact on the smart-home sector
The new Matter standard for smart homes could potentially end the fragmentation and incompatibility plaguing the sector. Here’s why that probably won’t happen. Read more…
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How a Google Cloud outage brought down the (smart) house
We learned last week that when Google Cloud goes down, so do your smart appliances. Or at least your ability to control them remotely. That’s bad, right? Read more…
Off the Wire
Smart home = $11.2b opportunity for telcos: report
Smart homes will be a $11.2 billion opportunity for telcos in 2022, according to a new report from ABI Research – however, they’ll have to work hard to get a piece of that smart home Read more…
Off the Wire
Here’s what consumers really want from IoT: CSG survey
Consumers have great expectations for the IoT as a wearable experience and a smart home enabler – but they’re also wary of complexity, according to a new global consumer market survey from CSG. As the Read more…
Off the Wire
Sino Group and China Mobile Hong Kong sign NB-IoT/5G pact
Sino Group and China Mobile Hong Kong (CMHK) have signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding to develop pre-5G infrastructure across Sino Group’s residential and commercial properties, using CMHK’s NB-IoT technology. The partnership will initially encompass Read more…
Off the Wire
Smart homes generate tons of consumer data, and everybody wants some
Smart home devices and systems promise to deliver a new world of detailed consumer data and insight – and telcos, retailers, advertisers, and a host of service providers are keen to leverage those insights, finds a Read more…
Off the Wire
Broadband Forum USP standard enables smart-home device management
The Broadband Forum has published its new User Services Platform (USP) standard for implementing, deploying and managing all types of devices in the broadband home. An evolution of the TR-069 standard, USP brings a unified, Read more…
Off the Wire
Dialog Axiata and Orange Electric launch IoT Wi-Fi socket
Sri Lankan operator Dialog Axiata has partnered with local electrical and lighting products manufacturer Orange Electric to launch the first IoT Wi-Fi socket manufactured in Sri Lanka. Operating exclusively on the Dialog Smartlife platform for Read more…
Off the Wire
The future of IoT in India is turning the lights off: Tata survey
The home is the principal environment where people in India expect IoT to make a visible and significant difference – mainly to make sure they didn’t leave the lights on. That’s according to the first Read more…
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Apple’s HomePod is too little too late for the smart speaker game
Apple’s much awaited HomePod is now available for pre-order and will start shipping on February 9. At $399, it is going up against some of the very best that the audio industry has to offer. Read more…
News
The virtual assistant war is coming to your home appliances
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Who would you rather have in your fridge? Alexa, Cortana, or some as-yet unknown virtual assistant? Manufacturers of appliances and other products are considering factors such as ease of use and Read more…
Off the Wire
Nokia showcases smart home sleep sensor at CES
Nokia has launched a sleep sensor at CES 2018 that delivers personalized sleep analysis and offers smart home control through IFTTT (if this then that) integration. The sensor, called Nokia Sleep, is a Wi-Fi enabled Read more…
Off the Wire
Alibaba AI Labs and MediaTek unveil Smartmesh for Tmall Genie
Alibaba AI Labs, which leads the development of Alibaba’s consumer artificial intelligent products, and chipset maker MediaTek have announced the first Smartmesh connectivity solution in China that supports the latest many-to-many Bluetooth mesh technology, in Read more…
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Most consumers want smart-home kit installed by humans: survey
It is tempting to believe that installing all those home devices, such as security, lighting and monitoring will be an easy task. Surely in this digital age, an app or some remote bot can open Read more…
News
#ITUWorld: SK Telecom showcases “Do IoT Yourself” kits
Smart homes, smart metering, quantum cryptography and 5G powered autonomous vehicles were among the innovations showcased by SK Telecom at ITU Telecom World 2017. During the event in Busan, South Korea, visitors were invited to Read more…
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Google Assistant needs more than great AI to rule the smart home
Google is great at getting third parties to build hardware that uses its software, but needs to work on developers of smart home devices if it wants to trounce Amazon. Following the general availability of Read more…
Off the Wire
SK Telecom releases mini-me version of Nugu AI speaker
SK Telecom has unveiled a miniature version of its Nugu artificial intelligence-powered speaker that sports new features such as movie info, financial services and an audio book service. “Nugu” refers to both SK Telecom’s AI Read more…
Features
The future of Roomba is IoT, big data and spatial mapping
(Reuters) – The Roomba robotic vacuum has been whizzing across floors for years, but its future may lie more in collecting data than dirt. That data is of the spatial variety: the dimensions of a Read more…
News
Another fine mesh: Bluetooth targets smart buildings with new specs
Bluetooth has just evolved from device-pairing to a smart-building enabler thanks to a new mesh networking capability optimized for creating large-scale device networks. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) says that the mesh feature is Read more…