Is Apple Ready to Feather Its Own “Nest?”

In an effort to blunt Google’s foray into the smart home as a result of its recent acquisition of Nest, it is widely expected that Apple will announce its own smart home strategy at its WWDC on June 2nd.

This strategy, if announced, is expected to play well to Apple’s core strategy – drive higher margin device sales and leverage the Apple iOS ecosystem. A report in the Financial Times suggested possible use cases to range from the ability to control lights and other home systems from iPads, iPhones or other devices to having certain home preset house functions, like lights, automatically trigger when a person is in “range” of their home, perhaps leveraging its new Beacon technology.

The paper also reports that Apple will certify select device makers to work with its system, similar to how its “made for iPhone” label works with respect to the same of certain iPhone/iPad compatible devices such as headphones, speakers and keyboards.

The report also speculated that Apple would be likely to highlight its privacy considerations and safeguards, a not so subtle knock against Google whose business model is dependent upon monetizing data and whose smart home business model is likely to be built upon serving ads on those devices.

Apple refused to comment.

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