Episode 401: Two big smart home deals explained

Episode 401: Two big smart home deals explained

Author: Stacey Higginbotham, tech journalist December 8, 2022 Duration: 54:24

The end of the year is a busy time for M&A as companies rush to get deals done before the start of a new tax year, and this week the smart home sector saw Assa Abloy sell its Yale and August smart lock and some other brands to Fortune Brands for $800 million. We explain why the deal happened and why we can blame Matter and the DoJ for the sale. Then we discuss NRG Energy’s $2.8 billion planned acquisition of Vivint, and why it is a big signal for the future of energy management as part of the smart home.  Fundings also happen ahead of the new years, and Phlux Technologies, which makes infrared sensors and Reach, a company building wireless over-the-air power transmitters both scored venture capital this week. In smart home news, we discuss a new mixer from GE that’s super smart and super pricey, and Samsung’s plans for CES this year. In security news, there’s a new botnet out there to worry about. And for developers, there’s a new $200 kit from Swarm that provides satellite connectivity. Finally, we answer a listener question about Matter and local control.

The GE Profile mixer is smart, but expensive. Image courtesy of Crate and Barrel.

Our guest this week is Cathy Pearl, a conversation designer at Google and the author of the O’Reilly book Designing Voice User Interfaces. We discuss the history of voice interactions and what changed to make Amazon’s Alexa such an innovation. We also discuss how voice can help make technology less complicated, what type of conversations people want from a voice interface and how voice also drives accessibility. Then we discuss the ethics of creating voice companions for lonely people and a time that Pearl was stuck at an airport talking to a chatbot for 20 minutes. We then end after I ask if voice is going anywhere after the upheavals in Amazon’s Alexa business. Her answer will not surprise you. Enjoy the show.

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Cathy Pearl, a conversation designer at Google
Sponsors: Arm and Silicon Labs

  • Assa Abloy slams the door on Yale and August brands
  • Why NRG wants to buy Vivint
  • Using antimony to make more accurate LiDAR
  • How context dictates what we want to say and hear
  • Can digital assistants provide companionship?

The post Episode 401: Two big smart home deals explained appeared first on IoT Podcast - Internet of Things.


For anyone trying to make sense of a world where everything from your thermostat to a factory floor is getting smarter, The Internet of Things Podcast-Stacey On IoT offers essential context. Veteran tech journalist Stacey Higginbotham, who brings her experience from Fortune, and co-host Kevin Tofel break down the weekly flood of news, separating genuine innovation from mere hype. Their analysis spans the entire connected ecosystem, diving into the gadgets in our homes, the sensors transforming industrial workspaces, and the complex enterprise systems tying it all together. This isn't just theoretical; it's a practical guide to the business and technology decisions shaping our networked future. You'll hear from a range of voices that have built and critiqued this landscape, including pioneers like Vint Cerf, insightful commentators like Om Malik, and practitioners from companies such as Amazon, AT&T, and IBM Watson. Listening to this podcast provides a crucial framework for understanding the real-world implications of connectivity, whether you're an industry professional, a curious developer, or simply someone wondering how all these "smart" things actually work-and what they mean for privacy, security, and daily life. It's the clear-eyed conversation you need to navigate the ever-expanding Internet of Things.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

The Internet of Things Podcast - Stacey On IoT
Podcast Episodes
Episode 386: We question Nova Labs’ 5G deal [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:32
Nova Labs, the company behind the decentralized Helium IoT network, has acquired FreedomFi, a company trying to build a decentralized 5G network. Kevin and I share our doubts about the value of a decentralized 5G network…
Episode 385: Google Cloud kills IoT Core and hearing aids get smart [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:05
This week’s show kicks off with a whispered bang that Kevin will soon hear, thanks to the FDA approving over-the-counter hearing aids. We talk about what happened and what it means for innovation in wearables before then…
Episode 384: Here’s why Amazon really bought iRobot [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:57
This week’s show kicks off with our discussion of Amazon’s planned acquisition of iRobot, the maker of Roomba robotic vacuums for $1.7 billion. We then talk about a survey from Parks Associates that indicates almost a th…
Episode 383: Meet Insteon’s new CEO [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:28
Last week, we kicked off the podcast with a discussion on the Helium peer-to-peer IoT network, and this week we did the same thing. This time we dug into the disclosures that Helium didn’t actually have Lime or Salesforc…
Episode 382: Is Helium full of hot air? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:11
We start this week’s show with a deep dive into a popular post from this week about the Helium network. The report pointed out that Helium only made $6,500 in the month of June from data rates. We explain why that’s not…
Episode 381: Alexa and Qualcomm embrace ambient tech [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:38
This week’s show kicks off with our discussion of several announcements from Amazon’s Alexa Live developers’ conference held Wednesday. Alexa is getting several features as part of the launch of the Matter smart home int…
Episode 380: Here’s what we think with Wink on the blink [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:55
This week’s show comes to y’all from Paris and the English seaside, with Kevin and I wondering exactly what happened to Wink. We also offer options for the few remaining holdouts on the platform. We then discuss Hive’s d…
Episode 379: Lock down your smart home’s data [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:47
This week we continue discussing privacy and data protection with a focus on the smart home. I’d like to see a feature that lets us turn on privacy as needed on our devices, but Kevin doesn’t think that’s likely. For tho…
Podcast 378: Welcome to the industrial metaverse [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:07
It’s been a minute since we’ve discussed the metaverse, but this week we cover Siemens’ deal with Nvidia to create the metaverse for the industrial IoT. It’s part of several announcements this week from Siemens that incl…
Episode 377: Why there were 56 OT vulnerabilities this week [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:32
This week we cover the Ericsson mobility report that offers some stats on cellular IoT connections, including the surprising nugget that we won’t see 4G/5G connections surpass 2G/3G connections until some time next year.…