The team here at iDigitalise know better than most just how fast things can change in the digital space. It can be difficult to keep up in such a fast-paced environment! But new developments are exciting and offer great opportunities for innovation. Smart Home Technology is just one of the latest digital innovations which isn’t just making life easier for users. It’s also opening new possibilities up for developers and businesses alike.
Smart Home Technology leaders in the market
Think about your smartphone, whether it’s an Android, iOS, Google Pixel or something else. It probably has voice recognition software built into it. Without even touching a button, a user can set a morning wake-up alarm, send a text, or check the weather.
So how does this technology work in the home? Over the past three years, Google and Amazon have developed and released smart speakers with integrated intelligent personal assistants. These smart PAs work in much the same way as Siri. Instead of limiting yourself to one device, smart home technology – the Google Personal Assistant for the Google Home smart speaker, and Amazon’s Personal Assistant, called Alexa, for the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers – can integrate smart devices across a whole range of appliances around the home.
Smart Home Technology makes life a little bit more seamless
In layman’s terms, you can ask your personal assistant – simply by using voice activation – to perform any number of tasks. You just need to integrate the tech with the right apps. Smart Home tech can help you with almost anything: from dimming the lights to turning the heating up or down, to adding eggs to your shopping basket and having the groceries delivered at your preferred time. With the rights apps, the possibilities for these clever little devices are really, truly endless.
We believe Smart Homes are the next big thing
The digital sector has steadily moved towards embracing Smart Home techs. With smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home now available to the mass market and highly affordable (the Echo Dot starts at just £49.99), the only way is up for this technology.
Businesses are taking advantage of new approaches to adaptable digital living. One of the most successful examples of this is Hive. The company offers remotely-controlled heating, water and electricity for the energy- and money-conscious homeowner. Hive started out as a smartphone app, but with the introduction of smart speakers, has been able to easily adapt to new formats.
Larger firms are also taking advantage of the trend: Tesco lists 25 applets on If This Then That (IFTTT.com), and recently introduced support for Google Home to add groceries to your shopping list by search term, with the intelligent personal assistant at the core of the development. Flipper Community, a tech firm which helps users easily switch or ‘flip’ their energy providers to save money, also recently announced new Google Home collaboration, the company’s CTO Sanjay Jadhav promises full integration, ‘with the aim of making energy switching so simple that all households across the UK can do it.’
Integrate your business seamlessly with your customers’ lives
Whatever your business does – whether it’s providing a service, selling a product or something else – there’s an app for that! Taking advantage of the Smart Home trend early is good for business. You’ll be ahead of the curve when it comes to your competitors, and you’ll also grow your customer base through an increased presence in consumers’ lives.
You might already be in the business of app development, but unsure how to make the leap into the smart speaker market. That’s where iDigitalise comes in.
We pride ourselves on being leagues ahead of the competition, and we’re equipped to work with new smart speaker technology. We’ve already developed smart speaker apps and applets for a whole range of businesses, from start-ups to global companies.
Our apps work on a whole range of platforms and with many different personal assistants. From new experiments in bots and Internet of Things, to world-renowned names like Siri, Cortana, Google, Alexa and more. Whatever your consumers’ preferred assistant is on their smart device or in their home, we’ve got the knowledge and expertise to keep them in the loop.
Think you’re ready to take the leap? Give iDigitalise a go. Drop us a line today and find out exactly what we have to offer you and your business.