Michael Wolf on the Smart Home

I recently caught up with my old friend Michael Wolf, who is the person who first hired me for some work at Gigaom Research, years ago. We remained in close contact, and Michael was one of the first I approached when I started rebooting Gigaom Research a few months back.

About Michael Wolf and Smart Kitchen Summit

Interview

Does Intel have a strategy for IoT?

You don’t have to look past the $4.2 billion that Intel’s mobile business lost last year to be reminded how difficult playing catch up can be. The fact that Intel lost the smart phone and tablet market early on to ARM has reverberated with the company for years.

And as we approach smartphone saturation in the developed world in the next few years, all semiconductor companies are looking for where the next major market will come from. Intel is no exception.

Whether that next major market will turn out to be the Internet of Things is one of the biggest questions right now. Surely, connectivity is proliferating and the 50 billion device figure by 2020 is likely to come true. We are entering a massive age of connectivity. And to that end, business models designed around monetizing that connectivity are apace. Every company wants to be part of the hardware solution for those 50 billion devices.

Everyone wants a piece of the smart home

It seems that everyone from home security leader ADT to the broadband and cable providers like Time Warner want a piece of the smart home. The logic goes that these companies already have existing relationships with millions of customers and importantly, have hardware in the home. Why not just layer on additional services like home energy management, lighting and thermostat controls and security?

Well apparently they’re not the only enterprise player with similar logic. In December, US Cellular announced its new home automation and security service called OnLook. What’s interesting about US Cellular’s move is that it doesn’t have existing home infrastructure. Rather, the company has the ability to move data over cellular networks and relationships with mobile phone customers.