Why Are Connected Products Disconnected?

Almost every new gadget now carries the "Connected" label. Light bulbs, bathroom scales, toothbrushes, toning belts, door locks, you name them... And in most cases the only thing they are connected to is their companion smartphone app. You can read a scale in an app. You can turn lights with an app (a different one). You can manage your abs toning exercise program with an app (yet a different one). And so it goes. Consolidation efforts by Apple (HomeKit, HealthKit) and Google / Nest (Works with Nest) are not getting any meaningful traction. Hero multi-connectors emerge from time to time (Revolv promised to save the world two years ago, then was Wink and now Amazon Echo). Actually the Echo has the most chances, but it is still in the infancy when it comes to serving a wide range of products, albeit the pace of new partnership announcements is very promising.

I've been repeating this for years but it is worth repeating. We need standards. Complete standards. Not just a "transport layer standard" or a "radio frequency standard". We need full stack standards that cover everything from bottom to top: all OSI layers. With the application layer being the most difficult, for one simple reason. The standards are set by engineers. Bluetooth engineers, WiFi engineers, IP engineers, 802.15.4 engineers. And they usually have no clue about the application layer.

Neither a Bluetooth engineer nor a WiFi engineer nor a 15.4 engineer knows enough about lights, personal healthcare devices, HVAC systems, window coverings, etc. Networking standards organizations have to start attracting domain experts. Without deep domain expertise they won't get anywhere. We have to get serious about this problem. Being able to push encoded octets via low power radio links won't make the world connected.