Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance to Develop Connectivity Standard

Apple Newsroom:

Amazon, Apple, Google, and the Zigbee Alliance today announced a new working group that plans to develop and promote the adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard to increase compatibility among smart home products, with security as a fundamental design tenet. Zigbee Alliance board member companies such as IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy, and Wulian are also onboard to join the working group and contribute to the project.

The goal of the Connected Home over IP project is to simplify development for manufacturers and increase compatibility for consumers.

Connected Home over IP = CHIP. A good acronym is a good place to start. I’d love to see this succeed — it’d be so great if connected home devices worked across platforms as well as USB devices do. And let’s face it, right now Siri is on the short end of the stick on that front.

(Conspicuously absent: Microsoft?)

★ Wednesday, 18 December 2019