Press release |
The European Commission has announced on June 9th, 2021 the preliminary results of its competition sector inquiry into markets for consumer Internet of Things (IoT) related products and services in the European Union, launched in July 2020. The Commission has then launched a public consultation, inviting all interested parties to comment on the findings of the sector inquiry, submit additional information or raise further areas of concern. As a company operating in the emerging IoT ecosystem, Cybronics has decided to contribute to the public consultation, in complement to the “Data” chapter of the preliminary report.
One of the benefits for consumers to invest in the smart home is the ability to simplify the operation of their devices, for example by creating “routines” that can trigger actions (such as: turning on the lights) on multiple devices from a single command (such as a voice request: “turn on all the lights”) or event (such as night fall), or by allowing “collaborations” between multiple smart home devices for the benefit of the user.
Until the launch of smart speakers and multiple purpose voice assistants around 2014, the “connected home” ecosystem was still fragmented, with a variety of device manufacturers providing appliances that could only be controlled through dedicated mobile applications from their manufacturer. This prevented sharing of data and control between smart devices from different manufacturers.
A few independent providers of IoT Gateways emerged with a goal to enable control of a variety of devices from different vendors from a single interface, thus allowing the creation of routines and the sharing of data between devices; however, providers found it difficult to maintain interoperability in the long run, and most were ultimately acquired by large manufacturers (ex: SmartThings by Samsung) or disappeared completely.
With the launch of Voice Assistant and smart speakers starting in 2014, followed by the apparition of development kits to simplify their integration with smart home devices (Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa Smart Home Skill API, Google Smart Home Actions) and official certification programs (“Works with Apple HomeKit”, “Works with Alexa”, “Works with Google Assistant”), the smart home consumer IoT ecosystem has become less fragmented. Often new smart home devices can be controlled from at least two different voice assistants, thus enabling multi-device control interfaces and automation scenarios, as data and events can be easily shared to allow more complex control scenarios.
Furthermore, Apple, Google and Amazon are all supporters of the Matter alliance so we can expect most new devices will adopt the new common IoT protocol, thus eliminating the risk of a proprietary smart home protocol dominating the ecosystem controlled by a single consumer IoT technology platform and simplifying data exchange.
If this trend guarantees interoperability between devices and voice assistants and benefits end-user in the short term, it may eventually lead to the emergence of “gatekeepers” to the data generated by the smart home devices, slowing down or preventing future innovations that require access to data from smart home devices. These gatekeepers will likely be the main consumer IoT technology platforms which also develop the most used voice assistants: Google, Amazon and Apple.
Recently both Google and Amazon have been requesting as part of their voice certification programs that all smart devices expose in real-time their current state to the Google Assistant or Alexa cloud services; for example a smart light switch must constantly expose its on/off status, or a smart thermostat must provide any change in temperature. This improves the functionality of voice assistants which are always “aware” of the status of any smart home device and can better interpret commands from end-users.
However, this approach also enables the consumer IoT technology platforms to gather all data generated from smart home devices, and as they explore new ways to monetize the smart home business, to leverage the position they enjoy on other digital markets (targeting advertising or e-commerce) and preempt the new smart home data market.
On the other end consumer IoT technology platforms may be tempted to “lock-up” the data generated by devices to prevent competitive usage by 3rd parties. For example, with iOS 14 Apple has added a new "network privacy control" that blocks 3rd party apps from finding and communicating with local smart home devices, in the name of privacy protection. This had the side effect of restricing certain functionalities, for example “content casting” that allows apps to display content on 3rd party displays, similar functionalities offered by Apple were not affected, such as Apple’s AirPlay protocol. In the future Apple could be tempted to extend these “privacy controls” to all devices using the HomeKit protocol, preventing them from sharing data or functionalities with 3rd parties unless they have received explicit confirmation from the user using an Apple consent management framework, similar to the App Tracking Transparency implemented in iOS 14.5.
Whether all smart home data is centralized, or its access is restricted and controlled by consumer IoT technology platforms, the result is the same: a few companies will become gatekeepers for accessing smart home data and will be able to monetize it directly or indirectly while preventing the apparition of competing services.
In the future device manufacturers should be able to freely share smart home device data with 3rd parties, while respecting the GDPR requirements. As such they should not be required to go through a gatekeeper to request authorization from end-users, nor be forced to expose all device generated data to a single party to obtain a certification.
We think that the European Commission should implement several measures to guarantee the openness of smart home data within the European Union:
Cybronics is a French company founded in January 2010 to develop services adapted for new types of connected home devices. Web site: www.cybronics.com
Jérôme DEROZARD
Phone: +33 1 83 62 35 37
E-mail: com@cybronics.fr