hello Automaters. Thanks for tuning in again. This video is intended to help you
make better decisions in the coming 2019 year and you know there's lots of prediction
videos out there, but now what I'm trying to do is actually use some of the
insights that I have in into the industry of smart home and home
automation and what I've seen in the past as a predictor to the future. So I'm
trying to help you make the right choices here in 2019. We're gonna have a
little fun in this video of course but let me give you my predictions for 2019
in the smart home and home automation space. Let's get going.
Now a few of these are going to be pretty obvious but let's start with what I
think is the most obvious one Google is going to build out their business
service business and the reason this is so obvious is what they're doing with
Duplex be it the first salvo with Duplex was basically let's create reservations
in businesses and the second salvo has been the ability for businesses to go
into you know a service like Google Maps and through their Google business
account to enable whether or not they will accept calls from duplex now what
this means for 2019 in my opinion is we're going to see some connected
services for businesses so businesses are going to be able to receive those
reservations as well as you as the consumer are going to be able to make
those reservations now it doesn't stop there in 2019 I think again we've seen
the consumer side where they're able to make purchases through certain Google
assistant skills or actions there. You're able to make some purchases with
some very specific vendors what you haven't been able to do is actually have
that other piece of the transaction be handled and and basically give you
updates on package all through duplex so you know biting into Amazon's world in a
bit of a backdoor way here, Google will with their partners. We've seen them
partner with Walmart and Best Buy we'll see them really partner with a
number of these retailers and handle lots of the processing for them of these
orders in the management of those orders through their systems so you're going to
see Duplex build into a business AI machine. So this is a bit of a wild
prediction and I'll admit there's not a lot of basis out on the market right now
the reason I'm saying this is going to occur is simply put, there's nothing out
there and Google has a history of ensuring that everyone has a platform to
build off and that that platform is theirs. So what I'm talking about here is
Google will release in 2019, I think this is going to be kind
of mid 2019, a platform for smart home and home automation and industrial
automation to build off of, and what this means is ZigBee and z-wave protocols are
going to start their decline. And you know what,
ZigBee and z-wave you know we've all relied on them for a few years and what
I'll say is they're falling a little bit behind and the other problem is the 2.4
gigahertz the Wi-Fi in your home cannot necessarily manage all of these devices
or we're going to struggle and we know Google already has their mesh Wi-Fi
platform it would be very simple for them to build that IOT platform either
into those devices as a firmware upgrade or build new devices that have that IOT
platform and really unite everyone under one umbrella, that again is their
umbrella. And then ultimately I think you know Google if they're building out the
business side here and they're building out the IOT which again that means
they're going to release products under this platform relatively soon in 2019
and that's why I think we haven't seen the z-wave hub be enabled in the Google
Home devices. I just don't think they're buying into those technologies as being
the be-all, end-all for their system, for their platform. So a couple
quick things about Google still and then we're going to move on to some of the other
home automation platforms here. Number one Nest is going to follow the Google
model. So I think we're done with the really, really high-end releases from
Nest. We'll see a few more because I'm sure they have some of those products in
the pipeline but ultimately Nest is going to fall in line. Now we saw the CEO
get let go earlier this year and ultimately I think he was standing in
the way of deeper integration with the Google platform and ultimately you know
following the Google model which is put a device in every part of the home so
they don't just want one device in your home that's very
expensive which is kind of the nest model you can't afford ten of those nest
IQ cams but you know ultimately you could afford five or six Google Home
Mini so we'll see nest fall in line now the next thing and this pairs a little
bit with Google duplex this is the processing power that they're giving you
there the routines functionality right now as far as I'm concerned they are so
far behind Amazon and they know it and they're going to fix it and what they're
going to fix it with is duplex now duplex will allow them to create
completely customized routines with multiple triggers and/or multiple
conditions so one thing that we haven't seen here yet and and this kind of goes
to industrial automation and and automation and software in general or
just software in general you know what you can have is you can have a trigger
but then you can test conditions and that's one of the things we've been
missing from a lot of these platforms and these software you know just these
software platforms they haven't been able to use conditions so you know we're
going to see that capability with duplex with the assistant with your Google
Homes and a completely customized capability for routines and we already
have the ability to use any you know any statement inside of a routine from
Google but what we what we still can't do is trigger a routine off of something
happening and that's because I believe behind this all is a much bigger release
for how home automation is going to work so I think you can see that Google is
relatively building to a couple of major major releases again and I'm sure we're
going to see that at Google i/o which this year I hope to be at physically so
you know Google i/o is going to come and I think we're going to see a bunch of
those releases but for now we're gonna move on to some of those other you know
smart home makers builders we're gonna leave Amazon towards the end of the vid
you know here because they have more partnership and intermixing with other
companies that i want to talk about but moving on to Apple and we've seen the
home pod come out and there's been mixed reviews about that device I mean audio
quality is unbelievable its ability to answer is actually a lot better than I
think people give it credit for and so Apple has a platform that a lot
of people I think would really like in the integration with iPhones and iPads
is really strong there's Apple T TV integration that's actually really good
as well so you know they have a lot here to offer but what they've done is in
pure Apple style they went out and tried to charge $400 for their device and
that's we're talking us here so you know here in Canada it's 450 Canadian I think
it's 350 in the US but you know it's a crazy number for people to jump into
home automation and so everybody everybody and their mother has been
saying mini home pod mini home pod mini home pod that's not what I see for 2019
what I see is following suit with a smart display and the reason I say that
is you think about the iPad platform and you know the amount of people who have
an iPad in their home now you can do conversions if they want that's not
Apple style what I see them doing is releasing an iPad style smart display in
2019 in a couple of different styles with a focus on home automation I ought
still all of the capabilities of an iPad and if you think about how powerful that
platform would be it just becomes a stationary iPad but able to control all
of your Apple devices all of your homekit enabled devices and that's what
I see coming so I don't see something that's cheaper I see something that's
more expensive and and that's kind of the way apples been going with their
iPhones anyway so I think that's actually a pretty safe prediction not
necessarily the way people were expecting Apple to go with creating a
mini version of their speaker so moving on to some of these other
home automation makers you know we have Samsung hanging out there with their
Samsung smartthings platform that needs a full refresh they released their v3
and their new application is coming and it has great functionality but what's
the point when Amazon routines are as good as they are and Google's routines
are going to be as good as they are Bixby dies on on launch essentially you
know it's it's been launched Bixby's dead in 2019 I'm sorry Samsung you're
too late you're you're not going to be able to keep up here so you know Bixby
dies but what's funny and this is the this is probably the interesting
prediction for people Cortana lives on and why does Cortana
live because they've partnered with Amazon and this is where we start
talking about Amazon and their partnership so Amazon is not going to
quit number one they are in this in the in for the long haul they're in for a
penny they're in for a thousand pounds you know and what they've done with
Microsoft is they've started this really really deep partnership and we're
already seeing echo products being sold inside the Microsoft stores so what does
that mean what's what's Microsoft's gain from this obviously there's going to be
a little bit of revenue and profit from selling Amazon's products in their
stores but what's the other side of this and so Cortana has to be a piece of this
and the ultimately the office connected services they're that whole platform has
to be used so for me Cortana becomes the business component of the Amazon voice
assistant and it also becomes the horsepower some of the horsepower behind
processing some of these requests and we've seen the latest email integration
and we know Microsoft has this big business component and so Amazon's going
to get more and more people for Microsoft into office 365 into
Microsoft's whole business platform the small business owner they're going to
target people like me so this is hard to explain in
terms of a prediction but ultimately Cortana becomes the business component
of Amazon's business business so this year 2018 we saw Amazon put out I think
you I think the number was 21 different products and that's 21 different echo
products or fire products that came out and we're home automation and we saw
everything from a microwave which people laughed at and you know to a wall clock
that is now on the market to the input to the auto all of those new devices and
you can see that branch out from Amazon trying to own a little piece of
everything in your home in different ways than just a smart speaker so Amazon
is going to continue that that's it's 40 to 50 products we're going to see this
year and so what is a prediction like that what I have to do is give you a few
examples so you know we have the amp we have the sub now and we have the fire TV
cube and the sticks all of those are home entertainment systems and they all
are going to have to play nice by the end of 2019 or people are going to feel
confused now some things work some things don't but one of the things that
Amazon sells for example is a lot of DVDs and a lot of blu-rays and a lot of
digital media of course now they're going to put out a blu-ray player / DVD
player and that's going to be an echo player and it's going to have the
ability to work with all of these devices all of those devices that I just
mentioned and it all has to be working by the end of 2019 they want to own your
entertainment center and they're working very very hard to beat everyone else to
the market on it now moving on to a second space in your home that I think
Amazon is trying to win a lot of your business within that is the kitchen and
the kitchens a lot harder to kind of go and say okay well we're gonna make an
Amazon echo toaster because not necessarily everybody has their toaster
plugged in all the time and you know a blender those kinds of things these are
much harder devices to get people to think well I would like a connected
device so there are a few things that I think are connected all the time that
Amazon is after and everyone laughed at the microwave they thought that silly
why would I want that GE actually produced one earlier this year if you'll
remember a couple of people have are a couple of businesses have identified
that this is really important and the this space is really important rather
now what I think we're going to see and what amazon has already identified in my
mind is that you have to attack those those things that are connected all the
time so the microwave is one of those the oven is another the dishwasher the
refrigerator so Amazon has that Amazon basics line that they're going to
release these under with echo integration so I think we're going to
see Amazon hit big time in the imply ins market and I wouldn't be surprised to
see them partner with someone on this call it the Amazon basic / Frigidaire er
I don't know what you're going to call it but I think we'll see them partner
with someone who's really good at building these appliances the laundry
rooms another place where they'll build a couple of those and release those in
probably late 2019 one other device that I think we're all dying for is a coffee
maker why can't I make a coffee maker in 2019 in an automated way without it
being the old drip kind I don't want that come on guys so I think we're going
to see Amazon build one of those and it's going to be a relatively automated
thing and when you run out I bet it oh I bet it orders you more coffee
a couple more predictions here about these other companies that are out there
they're kind of hanging out there they're touching into the home
automation space but they're not really you know full-on in and one of the
things is the little guy and the little guy is going to explode in 2019 and
quickly died and the reasons are basically what I've told you about
Google releasing their own platform and you know some of these big makers
struggling or changing their direction and you know when you talk about a
company like Amazon producing as many products as I think they're going to in
2019 you're just not going to have a lot of room for these little guys so we're
really going to become a four horse race in 2019 Google Amazon Apple and Xiaomi
speaking of the little guys this is my last prediction I'm not gonna you know
continue here I could continue probably for another half an hour talking to you
about Xiaomi and GE and all of those other makers who are clearly going to
bring a lot of products to the table and you know work in partnership with some
of those other big companies as well that's clearly going to happen but the
last prediction for you here is on automate your life we will have our own
home automation product or something that is a companion to home automation
products and we will have that by the second quarter of 2019 so that's my
prediction here that's for myself and it gives you a little bit of insight into
the ways I'm thinking about the market as well so there you have it everyone I
hope these predictions will help you and if you have questions about specific
things I've said in this or you just want to challenge me go ahead and
challenge me these are predictions or they're obviously not going to be 100%
accurate but if there's something you're seeing and you want to strike up a
conversation please go ahead leave them down below and of course join up on the
channel to see those predictions either come true or for me to crow so thanks
again everyone for watching and we'll see you next time
you