Category Archives: Smart home

Google, Hardware, OnHub, Quick Thoughts, Routers, Smart home

Quick Thoughts: Google’s OnHub router

2 Comments

It looks like a slew of reviews of Google’s OnHub router have come out in the last 24 hours or so, so I’m guessing some sort of embargo has lifted. It seems the reviews are decidedly mixed (which feels par for the course today for products both good and bad, as reviewers each seek to find something unique to say, often overreaching in search of something worth praising or criticizing). Glenn Fleishman has an interesting review of reviews of sorts at TidBits, which is  worth reading for its own sake and for the links to other reviews.

What I wanted to write up here quickly isn’t a review (I don’t have a review unit) but some other related thoughts I’ve had about the OnHub router since it was announced, and which have been reinforced by reading some of these reviews. We discussed some of this on the Beyond Devices Podcast a few weeks back, the week the router was announced, but I’ll probably go a bit deeper on some of it.  I’ll embed the podcast episode at the end of this post too.

A router for novices at a power user price

One of the things that struck me off the bat, but has really been brought home by these reviews, is that there’s a fundamental mismatch between the price positioning of this router and the target audience. The whole value proposition (at least for today – and we’ll come back to this) of this router is that it’s enormously simple to use. And yet it’s priced at $200, the same sort of range as the high-end routers in the market. The Wall Street Journal review notes some interesting trends in the router market, which I think serve as useful context for this device:

Cable companies and other Internet service providers now rent their customers basic Wi-Fi routers when they sign up for service. As a result, U.S. router sales have fallen from 6.1 million year-to-date in 2012 to 3.5 million in the same period this year, market research firm NPD reports… NPD determined that the average selling price is on the upswing. Cheap routers aren’t selling so well, but higher-end models… are. “People are willing to pay a lot of money—more than before—for an AC router with significantly better performance than they had in the past,” said Mr. Baker.

Here’s the thing: I’m betting that the kind of people who are willing to pay a lot of money for “an AC router with significantly better performance” are not the kind of people who feel intimidated by those routers. They’re the kind of people who know enough about routers to understand what distinguishes 802.11ac from some of the older technologies, and who are likely pretty comfortable customizing the various settings. And yet Google’s router is priced in this same range and yet removes many of the typical settings available to power users in other routers in that category. You can’t specify separate SSIDs for the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, you can’t get into a web interface, and many of the other deeper settings you can configure on almost any other router. This is a router for novices sold at a power user price point. As such, it’s likely to please neither group.

This is further reinforced by the fact that the router is clearly something of a trojan horse for Google in the home automation space, given the inclusion of Bluetooth and Zigbee, and yet again those users are likely to want far more control over their routers than the OnHub provides. Some of this may be solvable in software down the line, but I suspect Google’s whole mentality around this router is wrong, and that can’t be fixed by software updates.

A symbol of Google’s disjointed approach

To my mind, the OnHub router is also a symbol of Google’s disjointed approach to so many of its projects, and I worry that the Alphabet reorg will only make things worse. Google already has a home automation business, Nest, which not only makes its own products but has been the vehicle for both making further home automation acquisitions (Dropcam) and for acting as a hub for other home automation gear (the Works with Nest strategy). And yet, this product isn’t branded Nest, nor does it apparently sit under Tony Fadell’s hardware group, which also includes Google Glass. In fact, Mark Bergen of Recode and Amir Efrati of the Information have both suggested that this product actually came out of the Google Fiber team. I’ve written previously about how disconnected from the rest of Google the Fiber project has seemed, and it’s ironic to now see Google proper appropriate this technology just as Fiber is being hived off into a separate Alphabet company. The good thing about Google is that people throughout the organization feel free to experiment with various things, some of which eventually become products. The bad thing is that this means you could have several separate teams working on similar things in isolation, and in some cases you end up with several products apparently chasing the same use case (e.g. the Nexus Q, Chromecast, and Google TV/Android TV).

The naming of the OnHub router, the subdomain on.Google.com, the naming of the companion app (Google On), and so on all suggest that this is the beginning of a broader strategy (and we already know that there will be another router made in partnership with Asus). But this is yet another effort within Google to tie together the different devices in the home. Why isn’t it owned by Nest? How will it relate to Android TV and Chromecast, Google’s other living-room projects? So many questions, and so few answers…

The theory and the reality

One other thing Google has touted as part of its positioning for the OnHub is this idea that it is pretty enough to sit in the living room. This, too, feels like a very Googley statement – I’m not sure how many people with real design sense would actually want even a relatively good-looking router in their living rooms. But it’s also a bit of a non-starter as a practical matter – the router doesn’t stand alone – it needs both a power cable and an ethernet cable to function, and you’ll seldom find both of those in the middle of a living room. You’ll at least have power outlets in the wall, but your cable modem is likely to be in a closet somewhere rather than in your living room. And with only one jack in the back of the device, you’re going to need a switch somewhere else anyway for the rest of your hardwired devices, another example of the mismatch between functionality and pricing.

I could go on with all this, but you get the idea. Though an interesting product, the OnHub feels like it falls short on the theory alone, let alone the reality (where several of the reviews suggested it falls down too, even on the most touted features). But it also feels like it’s emblematic of several of the key challenges Google has – too many experiments and projects that are poorly coordinated, poorly thought-through, and ultimately poorly executed. I’m not convinced that the Alphabet structure will help with any of this, and in fact it’s quite likely that it will make the fragmentation problem worse rather than better.

Android, Apple, Google, iPhone, Quick Thoughts, Smart home

Quick thoughts: Another way to think about Nest

1 Comment

A couple of good blog posts from other analysts this morning triggered a thought in my mind about Nest.

The first of the two blog posts is from my fellow Techpinions contributor Ben Bajarin. I recommend reading the whole thing, but here’s the key thought:

Apple’s customers are higher value customers and their growing installed base means they are amassing one of the largest, if not the largest, installed base of premium customers on the planet. This observation has some striking implications…

He goes on to talk about two of the implications, and I think the insight there in  particular is great. One of them is the impact this has on the competition, among which of course we find Google, which owns the mobile operating system that’s mopping up the vast majority of the non-Apple customers.

Something else I read this morning (a post from Benedict Evans that’s really about something completely different) prompted me to think about this in the context of Google’s Nest acquisition. I’ve been thinking about Nest primarily as Google’s strategic play in the smart home space, and as the hub and vehicle for the rest of what Google will do in the home. And I think that may well be in large part what that Nest acquisition is about.

But thinking about Nest in the context of Ben Bajarin’s piece made me see Nest in a different way. Think about Nest for a minute: its characteristics as a product, the people it’s likely to attract, even the people who work there. This is a very Apple-like product, made by a former Apple executive, and I’ve always said that Nest was a much better fit at Apple than at Google. It’s even sold in Apple stores.

What if Nest is at least in part about capturing those very lucrative and attractive Apple customers without having to convert them to Android? What if what Google is building with Nest is at least in part a concession that Android and phones based on Android aren’t likely to attract these customers, but by playing in a completely different space – the smart home – Google can in fact attract those customers? And once it has them there, perhaps convert them to other aspects of the Google ecosystem, which after all is where Google really makes its money? There’s no particular reason why Google needs to have all its customers on Android anymore – it’s served its function of preventing Microsoft and Apple from dominating the mobile world. And of course, there’s been lots of talk about even Google’s services making more money on iPhones than on Android. What if Google could establish a different beachhead in devices that’s not dependent on first converting people to Android? What’s fascinating about Nest is that it’s about the only recent Google initiative that’s not about reinforcing Android as a platform – Android Wear, Android Auto and Android TV are all about extending Android specifically into new domains rather than simply spreading Google services into new domains.

I’ve no idea if this was actually part of the thinking behind the acquisition of Nest – most likely, like other acquisitions, it wasn’t about a single strategic objective but rather several. But it would certainly be an interesting response to the emerging reality that Apple has captured the vast majority of the most valuable customers within its ecosystem, and trying to win them back through phones seems to be a losing strategy.

The big downside to this, of course, is that Google has very deliberately kept Nest somewhat at arm’s length from the rest of the company (a point Benedict raised in his post). But this strategy only works if Google continues to build links between the two, as it’s already begun to do with Google Now integration. With Tony Fadell now overseeing Glass as well, there’s obviously even more linkage between Google proper and the Nest team, and it’s another sign that Fadell might be asked to oversee more Google devices and pursue the same strategy.

Apple, Apple Retail, Beats, Developer events, Distribution, Emerging markets, HealthKit, HomeKit, Mature markets, Retail, Smart home, WWDC, WWDC 2014

Apple is doubling down on mature markets

As we gear up for Google I/O next week, and imagine what we might see from Google there, I wanted to have one last look at Apple’s WWDC, from a slight different perspective. One of the thoughts about WWDC that’s taken a while to percolate for me is that WWDC was a good sign that, from a product perspective at least, Apple is doubling down on mature, developed markets, rather than joining the land rush in emerging markets.

HomeKit and HealthKit are about solving first-world problems

I wrote about HealthKit and HomeKit in a couple of previous pieces here and on Techpinions. I think they’re both much-needed solutions to real problems in the health and fitness and home automation categories. But these are in some ways the very definition of first world problems. Trying to get your smart lock, your smart lightbulb and your smart thermostat to talk to each other is a challenge experienced only by people who can afford to buy the overpriced products on offer in these markets.

HealthKit also comes into its own in part when tying together several different fitness tracking devices, which is another first-world phenomenon. There is, though, another element to HealthKit, which is about access to medical data from various healthcare providers. But again, this is something of a mature-market issue. A recent data set from Opera Mediaworks highlighted the disconnect between mature and emerging markets when it comes to searching for health related information on mobile devices:

Continue reading →

Apple, Apple TV, Developer events, Developers, fragmentation, Google, HealthKit, HomeKit, iOS, iOS 8, iWatch, Microsoft, OS X, Smart home, Smartwatches, Wearables, WWDC, WWDC 2014, Yosemite

Apple resurgent – thoughts on WWDC

Today’s WWDC keynote was a sign of a renewed swagger on the part of Apple, whose executives seemed to relish the deluge of new product announcements they unleashed on developers and on their customers. In the process Apple established or strengthened its competitive positioning against two major foes – Microsoft and Google – while opening itself up in unparalleled ways to developers. Today’s announcements may come to be seen in the same way as Steve Jobs’ original launch of Mac OS X, in that it lays the groundwork in several areas for years of future Apple products.

The demotion of Google continues

Two years ago at WWDC, Apple removed erstwhile close partner Google from the iPhone in two significant areas: as the backend provider for the Maps app, and in the form of the pre-installed YouTube app. But Google’s last major bastion on iOS is its position as the default search engine in Safari, and it’s much harder to remove there. In the sense of typing a query into a search box or address bar in a browser, hitting enter and being presented with a screen of blue links, Google is unrivaled, and Apple knows that. But it has slowly been inserting itself between the user and that search box over the last couple of years, and today’s keynote provided further evidence of Apple’s pre-empting of the Google search on both iOS and OS X devices.

Apple’s more subtle disruption of the user-Google relationship began with the launch of Siri, which began to address some users’ queries without an explicit search, and which uses Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha and Bing, but not Google, as underlying search providers. And it has continued since then, as more third party services have been layered into Siri, pre-empting the Google search for movie listings, restaurant reservations and sports scores. Today’s keynote added Spotlight search to the list of places where users will now find answers to their queries without the classic search box experience, thus further inserting Apple between users and Google.

This is potentially significant for Google, for which the US continues to be easily its single biggest and most lucrative market, and for which mobile is increasingly important. To the extent that iPhone users, which make over 40% of US smartphone users, start using Apple and its tightly integrated third party services instead of Google, for search, that’s pretty bad news. That isn’t, of course, why Apple is taking these steps, but it’s an unpleasant side effect for Google. And a great way for Apple to participate in the search business without having to match Google in the page-of-blue-links business.

A device for every need, not one device for every need

Continue reading →

Apple, Google, HomeKit, Nest, Smart home, WWDC 2014

Apple and the smart home

The FT reported yesterday that Apple will be announcing some sort of smart home ecosystem next week at WWDC. Interestingly, I’d written about Apple’s potential to do something interesting in the smart home space a couple of months ago on Techpinions, as part of a longer piece about how Apple has the potential to de-fragment various industry sectors, including wearables, payments and the smart home. Monday’s report got me thinking about some of those themes a bit more, and triggered several more thoughts, some of which I shared with Tim Bradshaw of the FT (who broke this news as well as the Apple-Beats news) for his follow-up piece on the subject. I thought I’d write up some of them here in more detail too.

Current state of the smart home market

In a word, fragmented. This market is characterized by a wide range of players with their own approaches to knitting together the various components of what might make up a smart home. No-one does everything end to end, so you’re either stuck with various islands that can’t talk to each other, or reliant on trying to find devices that participate in one of several ecosystems which are emerging. Qualcomm has AllJoyn/AllSeen, the UPnP forum is extending its work with UPnP and DLNA into this area, SmartThings, Staples, AT&T and others are creating their own proprietary ecosystems and so on. But it’s a messy business and no-one really owns it today. If you’ve bought products from several vendors, chances are you’d have to go into your Nest, Belkin and Phillips apps separately to turn your thermostat, home audio system and lights on separately. That’s not exactly user friendly.

But the point here is that the smartphone is the obvious controller for all these various devices, and yet none of the players currently playing in this market has a direct stake in the smartphone market, at either the hardware or OS layer. Qualcomm perhaps comes closest, but is two steps removed from the end user and as such has little direct influence over user behavior. The players in the strongest position here are those who craft smartphone hardware and software.

Apple’s smart home solution likely has several parts

Continue reading →