Apple Home will do little to spur the stagnant smart home market

Apple Home Ecosystem

At this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple finalized its smart home ecosystem by announcing the upcoming release of the Home app in iOS 10.

The app is built off HomeKit, which is Apple’s smart home developer framework and interoperability protocol released in 2014. The app helps Apple iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch users control HomeKit compatible smart home devices from a single app, rather than multiple apps.

While the app helps Apple users better manage smart home devices, BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, believes it will do little to spur the overall stagnant smart home market. The smart home market continues to be plagued by high device prices, limited value, and hard-to-install devices. Apple Home attempts to fix the fact that many of the devices are difficult to install, but the system has many limitations.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we analyze the finally complete Apple Home ecosystem. We examine the Apple Home app, as well as HomeKit, and discuss it's potential effect on the overall do-it-yourself smart home market.

Here are some key points from the report:

Apple is following Amazon's success with voice automated control in the smart home. The tech giant opened Siri up to third-party developers, enabling voice activation of smart home devices within the Apple Home ecosystem.
The Home app enables the user to control single smart home devices, multiple devices in a single place, and all of their devices at once.
The Apple Ecosystem is faced with many barriers. They include stringent manufacturer requirements, limited device numbers, and a limited user base.

In full, the report:

Identifies the key barriers preventing smart home growth
Explains how the Home app works and its usability
Examines the MFi program that smart home device makers have to use to make their devices compatible with the Apple ecosystem
Discusses the potential role of Siri within the Apple Home ecosystem

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