Smart home involves the automation of lighting, heating (such as smart thermostats), ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), and security, as well as home appliances such as washer/dryers, ovens or refrigerators/freezers.

While there are still very little worldwide accepted industry standards, notwithstanding the smart home space is heavily fragmented, competition in the sector has been growing fiercely.

The Amazon Echo has suddenly become the hottest smart home product on the market, not only has Amazon built Alexa (digital assistant) into its products, but the company has also allowed third-party hardware makers to build Alexa into their own devices.

With Apple rumored to be preparing to launch a smart speaker soon, possibly at the company's annual conference in June; the speaker connects to the internet and users could talk to it through Apple's voice assistant, Siri.

Apple aiming for better speaker and microphone technology, with its smart speaker described as having excellent "acoustics performance," runs iOS and may include some sort of Beats technology, as well as support AirPlay.

Google Home, on the other hand, boasts of Google Assistant which is able to answer questions and carry out instructions. And with support for multiple users, it can differentiate one voice from another in the home so as to ensure a more personalized experience.

And Google recently pitched its smart home offering to keep up with your busy schedule, with the introduction of shopping with Google Assistant on Google Home.

There are a wide variety of technology platforms, or protocols, on which a smart home can be built.

Albeit, Smart Home suffers from lack of technical standards, a situation where the variety of home automation devices, in terms of both hardware variations and differences in the software running on them, makes the task of developing applications that work consistently between different inconsistent technology ecosystems difficult.

Analysts has projected the global home automation system market to reach USD 78.27 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 12.46% between 2016 and 2022.

Is it Google, Apple or Amazon who will rule the Smart Home?



Smart home involves the automation of lighting, heating (such as smart thermostats), ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), and security, as well as home appliances such as washer/dryers, ovens or refrigerators/freezers.

While there are still very little worldwide accepted industry standards, notwithstanding the smart home space is heavily fragmented, competition in the sector has been growing fiercely.

The Amazon Echo has suddenly become the hottest smart home product on the market, not only has Amazon built Alexa (digital assistant) into its products, but the company has also allowed third-party hardware makers to build Alexa into their own devices.

With Apple rumored to be preparing to launch a smart speaker soon, possibly at the company's annual conference in June; the speaker connects to the internet and users could talk to it through Apple's voice assistant, Siri.

Apple aiming for better speaker and microphone technology, with its smart speaker described as having excellent "acoustics performance," runs iOS and may include some sort of Beats technology, as well as support AirPlay.

Google Home, on the other hand, boasts of Google Assistant which is able to answer questions and carry out instructions. And with support for multiple users, it can differentiate one voice from another in the home so as to ensure a more personalized experience.

And Google recently pitched its smart home offering to keep up with your busy schedule, with the introduction of shopping with Google Assistant on Google Home.

There are a wide variety of technology platforms, or protocols, on which a smart home can be built.

Albeit, Smart Home suffers from lack of technical standards, a situation where the variety of home automation devices, in terms of both hardware variations and differences in the software running on them, makes the task of developing applications that work consistently between different inconsistent technology ecosystems difficult.

Analysts has projected the global home automation system market to reach USD 78.27 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 12.46% between 2016 and 2022.