The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) announced Thursday that products from BSC Computer GmbH, COMMAX, Haier, LG Electronics, Resideo, Samsung Electronics and SURE Universal will be showcased in completely interoperable smart home demonstrations at the OCF IoT Breakthrough press event in Las Vegas next week.
These devices will complete OCF 2.1 certification in 2020, ensuring robust and secure connectivity between devices. Many of these and other OCF member companies will be commercially launching products based on the OCF specification in 2020.
Research shows that revenue from the smart home market is expected to show an annual growth rate of 17.6 percent, resulting in a global market volume of more than $141 billion by 2023. As the smart home market continues to rapidly grow, secure interoperability will be key in making the IoT successful.
The OCF Certification Program helps manufacturers create products that “just work” with other OCF Certified IoT devices regardless of their form factors, operating systems, service providers or transports. OCF’s 2.1 specification, a recognized ISO standards specification, ensures this interoperability is built into all OCF Certified devices.
The OCF supports standardized procedures for bridging to other IoT ecosystems and provide detailed implementations for Bluetooth, EnOcean, Zigbee and Z-wave protocols.
Applying the IoT in the context of a private household is what is commonly known as a smart home. The smart-home ecosystem is continuing its rapid expansion, but market growth rates are directly linked to the speed of 5G implementation.
Recent IoT investments by Google, Apple, Amazon or Alibaba have changed the landscape noticeably, providing opportunities for all kinds of companies, but have also forced market consolidation. Considering the current moderate user penetration, long product replacement cycles and increasing device connectivity, adoption will steadily grow in the next years.
The Smart Home market builds on Statista’s primary research (the Statista Global Consumer Survey), bottom-up modeling, market data from independent databases and third-party sources, the analysis of various key market and macroeconomic indicators, historical developments, current trends, the reported performance indicators of the key market players, and Statista interviews with market experts.
The Smart Homes metrics show the number of existing smart homes (single-occupant homes and households in multi-unit dwellings) of the selected market (market segment, region) in millions for each year.
“In the near future, smart homes and buildings will have typically over 200 different products improving comfort, security and energy usage. Having all of these powered by mains cables or batteries which need to be regularly changed or re-charged is simply not practical,” said Jörg Hofmann, CEO, BSC Computer GmbH. “By introducing the EnOcean energy harvesting wireless standard into the OCF world, BSC Computer has enabled simple addition of multiple ‘peel and stick’ maintenance-free sensors and switches into their smart buildings via the BSC smart secure gateway, a major expansion and improvement of the excellent interoperable OCF eco-system.”
“The collaboration that occurs within OCF is a meaningful process that contributes to the proliferation of the global smart home industry and dramatically improves end user experience,” said Woo Seok Byun, CEO, COMMAX. “COMMAX has been providing smart door entry, home automation, and home security-related products in Korea and worldwide, and it is a market leader in the development and launch of high-tech applications in the smart home industry. COMMAX has plans to focus on realizing product supply through continuous investment and technology development for service connection through OCF in the future.”
“OCF brings the global IoT industry a fully interoperable and standardized solution with high-level security,” said Guohuo Chen, general manager, Haier Uplus Intelligent Technology. “Leveraging OCF bridging and the Universal Cloud Interface, Haier U+ will offer our customers the best user experience as always.”
“The world has become too complex and diverse for any one company to be able to meet all different demands of customers,” said I.P. Park, president and CTO of LG Electronics. “LG is driving digital transformation in manufacturing and integrating AI into a whole portfolio of products to eventually provide our customers with benefits of a seamless and intelligent connected experience. We will leverage standardized OCF Universal Cloud Interface to facilitate open collaboration across industries and to realize the full potential of AI for a truly better life.”
“The smart home today is anything but smart, there are too many apps and competing communication protocols to make it happen and homeowners are increasingly frustrated,” said Scott Harkins, vice president and general manager, Connected Home, Resideo. “The OCF Universal Cloud Interface standard will greatly simplify and reduce the work associated with IoT Cloud to Cloud communications. By implementing this as an industry standard, we’ll reduce the need for one-off, cloud to cloud connections, streamlining our development work and helping simplify the smart home experience for consumers.”
“As a founding member of the OCF, over several years we have contributed much to deliver a standardized IoT solution to the market,” said Hyogun Lee, head of R&D, Visual Display Business, Samsung Electronics. “We anticipate that the OCF Universal Cloud Interface can resolve the current IoT market fragmentation and thus build the unified IoT ecosystem.”
“It has been a great experience and opportunity for SURE to be a part of the OCF community for the last four years,” said Viktor Ariel, CEO, SURE Universal and chair, Business Steering Committee, OCF. “During that time, SURE developed a complete turnkey IoT platform based on the OCF standard, including cloud-to-cloud API, set-top box gateway, IoT communications module, and mobile universal remote app. SURE IoT client, STB, and module have been certified by OCF, and the complete SURE IoT platform was successfully tested for interoperability with the leading OCF partners. Currently, it is in the process of evaluation by carrier operators and appliance vendors worldwide. The successful OCF implementation signifies the new beginning of the user-friendly, secure, and interoperable IoT, which is available for IoT products worldwide.”
