Page 8 - DECT Today - Issue 3 - May 2015

Deutsche Telekom’s smart home platform. As you might know, Deutsche Telekom has spent the last three years building its open smart home platform QIVICON, which is designed to advance the market significantly from where it is today. Our initial smart home offering successfully launched in Germany in late 2013 and is now available internationally as a white label solution.
Over 30 partners utilise the platform already, including notable manufacturers, including Philips, Osram, Miele, Sonos, Samsung, Huawei, Netamo, Bosch Thermotechnik and many more. In Germany, we have also partnered with leading utilities, including EnBW, Vattenfall, Rheinenergie and Entega to provide a range of home energy management services, as well as with the world’s largest insurer, Allianz. In 2014, Frost & Sullivan selected our open smart home platform QIVICON for their European Visionary Innovation Leadership award. In addition, Analysys Mason, global specialist adviser on telecoms, media and technology (TMT), honoured QIVICON as the most matured initiative.
Last year, we joined the Eclipse Foundation, an international open source software community as a solution member to open up our platform to 3rd party developers and programmers. The Eclipse Foundation is one of the world’s largest independent developer communities and offers many companies and developers an opportunity to help shape the future of the Smart Home. We support Eclipse’s SmartHome project with contributions of our own and will use the emerging open source technology as a core building block of our platform.
2. What are the key reasons for operators today who are driving Smart Home development?
JCK: There are multiple reasons for operators to help drive the development of the smart home market. For the most part, the smart home provides operators with two principal benefits:
a) to further differentiate their core offerings in the market to increase their share of net adds and improve customer loyalty or ‘stickiness’.
b) to increase customer value – either by bundling or selling innovative new connected peripherals and creating value on the hardware sale, or by raising ARPU (average revenue per user) by developing new subscription-based services.
Even greater value can be created – both in terms of differentiation and increased value – if operators then look to extend their own branded offering and build an ecosystem of partners, similarly to what Deutsche Telekom has done in Germany, where we have partnered with leading utilities, insurers and major device manufacturers. The opportunity in partnership with those brands is to create new service-based propositions in the area of extended warranty, appliance prognostics, usage-based insurance, etc.
Operators have a unique advantage – not available to the majority of other providers in the home – in that for the most part they are the principal provider of the broadband access router or set-top box. Leveraging this asset, building the capabilities that integrate with a cloud platform, will enable operators to ensure they are not disintermediated in this fast evolving market.
3. How do you envision a typical smart home environment in 10 years’ time?
JCK: Just as the last ten years have seen a radical change in our homes, as broadband has been increasingly adopted and the number of connected devices has increased, so too will the next ten years see even more dramatic changes. We foresee that over the coming decade, there will be literally an explosion in the range and type of connected devices in our homes – beyond just personal and media- based devices, to include a broad range of large and small appliances, boilers, as well as smart meters, telecare devices and beyond.
We concur with Gartner’s analysis of this market, and it claims that the vast majority of domestic equipment will become ‘smart’ – in the sense of gaining some level of sensing and intelligence combined with the ability to communicate, usually wirelessly – with the result that a typical family home, in a mature affluent market, could contain several hundred smart objects by 2022. Gartner has gone so far as to suggest some homes could have up to 500 smart connected devices in them.
4. Which areas of development should ULE product manufacturers focus on, to make their products really successful?
JCK: Firstly, ULE manufacturers should be looking to work with their key customers today to determine how greater value can be leveraged from the existing DECT devices that are either in the field, or are set to enter the market. Can DECT phones and base stations be leveraged to create new use cases, either
related to security or safety, which has been shown to be the primary use case that the majority of operators have or are bringing to market? Secondly, ULE manufacturers should be looking to work with open platforms, such as Deutsche Telekom’s open smart home platform QIVICON, which leverages the Eclipse SmartHome open source software community.
We know that customers don’t want to be limited in their product choices or care about compatibility issues. As such, integrating any device into a smart home setup needs to be simple and intuitive – and this is where DECT manufacturers have demonstrated their clear ability over the last 15+ years. To capture growth in the smart home market, they need to be reinforcing this core strength, but be looking to create new use cases that can leverage the existing hardware that is already in homes.
5. What are you most looking forward to at DECT WORLD in Barcelona?
JCK: Firstly, I am looking forward to seeing what new ULE devices will be available, and relevant for the connected home market. Cost is a key driver in this market, so the related BOM cost will be important to understand.
Second, I’m keen to see what form factor these devices take. The look and feel – the aesthetics of the device itself – will be critical if DECT manufacturers are to capture the imagination of consumers, and effectively compete with manufacturers who are already actively playing in this market, but leveraging WiFi, Zigbee, Z-Wave and Bluetooth Smart.
Bill Ablondi, Director, Smart Home Strategies, Strategy Analytics
Bill Ablondi will be chairing the two-day conference at DECT World and has many industry insights to
share as Director of Smart Home Strategies at Strategy Analytics in the US.
1. Bill, what are the key challenges for the DECT industry in 2015?
BA: I think the biggest challenge for DECT is awareness of the capabilities of the technology. What percentage of the 100+ million users is aware they are using
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DECT WORLD 2015
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