A new fifth core competency in the era of smart home
In the last column I talked about how developers compete in four core competencies - location, price, design and brand - and that for the first time in real-estate history there would be a new fifth core competency on which developers would have to compet
Well, now I can. On August 13, we at Ananda Development announced a partnership with Samsung to launch the Internet of Things Samsung Smart Home, which is available in our Q31 project first, with more to come.
The smart home is set to change how we live in the home as much as the smart phone has changed how we live outside it. It was only in 2007 that Apple first launched the iPhone, and even they didn’t foresee the potential as they didn’t launch the app store until a year later, in 2008.
Now life has been transformed by apps we can’t live without that just a few years ago we couldn’t even imagine.
The Internet of Things coupled with the smart home is a game changer as big as the smart phone has been. Even if it may not be obvious now, these technologies will change the very definition of what real estate is over the coming years.
From this year onwards customers have a choice: they can continue to buy dumb inert boxes that simply provide walls and a ceiling, or they can buy smart homes that actively care for their families, care for them, improve their health, and save them money.
In a few years, selling a dumb home will be like selling a home without air-conditioning – unimaginable.
The smart home introduces ‘functionality’ as a new fundamental core competency that developers will need to master and innovate in, as for the very first time it allows developers to change the way that a home functions.
A home is no longer an inert box, but a cluster of technologies that provides a range of functionalities that can directly improve the life of its occupants.
The partnership with Samsung is especially gratifying for us as it includes joint research. We share a customer-centric view with Samsung, and we will be working together to learn more about how technology can be used to improve the lives of all our different types of customers.
That is, how a smart home can save time and money for busy young professionals, how it can help take care of your elderly parents or young children, how it can improve the safety and security of young women living alone, and how all the different technologies now available and those that are coming can be utilised to add functionality to homes to improve the lives of those who live within them. Samsung launched its SmartHome technology this month at a trade show in Germany. It will be available in a very limited number of markets at first – oh, and from Ananda in Thailand.
We’re immensely proud that the world’s largest electronics company chose Ananda as a partner to exclusively launch this technology in Thailand, and chose us as a research partner on what will be a globally important new technology platform. This shows that Thai companies are able to work alongside the world’s best companies.
Through this research collaboration, I believe Thailand can be at the forefront of the global development of Internet of Things and smart-home technologies.
And to further support this, Ananda will award grants to local innovators to produce SmartHome products and services, and we will also support these entrepreneurs in getting their solutions out to the global platform with the support of our partner, Samsung.
