Nest recently announced that they would shutdown the service that keeps Revolv Hubs running, leaving consumers with a device as useless as a container of hummus. Revolv is owned by Nest and shut down their service so they could pour all their “energy into Works with Nest.” Nest also owns Dropcam, a smart security camera company.
Shortly after Nest acquired Dropcam, the company launched the Nest Cam smart security camera as an improvement to the Dropcam Pro. While consumers reported higher delight for Dropcam cameras when the Nest Cam was launched in June 2015, consumers have been losing interest and delight as Nest Cam users are becoming happier and more prevalent. Dropcam users are being transitioned to the Nest App, but given Nest’s recent announcement about shutting down Revolv, we can’t help but wonder if Dropcam users should also be worried about their Nest owned devices becoming bricks.
Trajectory in the chart below shows delight over time, size of bubbles represent review volume per week.
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Nest recently announced that they will shutdown the cloud service that runs Revolv. While the company framed this shut down as a stepping stone on the greater path to a connected home, the immediate reality is that homes which are currently made ‘smart’ with Revolv hardware will revert back to being ‘dumb.’
Nest Labs is a leading manufacturer in the Smart Home market. They make some of the most popular smart thermostats, smoke detectors and security cameras available today, and are owned by tech giant, Google (Alphabet). Nest’s kiss of death for Revolv demonstrates a glimpse into yet another issue with the codependence of software and hardware in the Smart Home. Since Revolv hubs, like many other connected devices, are controlled through the cloud, the devices will be rendered useless when Nest discontinues the software.
Killing Revolv’s cloud will leave consumers with an expensive paper weight, or an empty container of Hummus as Arlo Gilbert so eloquently argued in this post. Nest’s actions throw IoT down a rabbit hole, demonstrating that companies have the power devalue your $300 gadget. An article in Wired argues that Nest’s decision proves we “can’t rely on ‘Internet of Things,'” since it makes 18 month old hubs obsolete. That’s one expensive container of hummus, so what’s the point of investing in a device that the manufacturer could render useless once they develop the next generation?
While Nest’s decision to shut down Revolv will obviously effect the Smart Home market, our consumer data shows nothing but discontent with Revolv products. Delight for the Revolv hub has been falling since the acquisition, while delight for Nest devices climbs.
While some Revolv fans will miss their hubs, Nest is using this as an opportunity to grow and promote their Works With Nest initiative. As a response to inquiries about opening up Revolv development to third parties, Nest responded by saying: “Revolv was a great first step toward the connected home, but we believe that Works with Nest is a better solution and are allocating resources toward that program.”
Nest had to trim some fat to focus their greater Smart Home efforts. Revolv was a casualty in the ongoing battle of the Smart Home Ecosystem (which, by the way, Amazon is currently dominating over Apple and Nest, read about that here).
Will this decision make consumers think twice about purchasing more Nest hardware? We are continuously monitoring the entire Smart Home market, you can subscribe to our free weekly Smart Home updates, or monitor Smart Home brands, retail, and feature trends monthly with our Fit Kits.
If you are looking to download a rewards app, you might want to earn your points with 5 Star, not Plenti. The two apps see about the same amount of feedback, as indicated by the bubble size in the chart below, but consumers prefer 5 Star by a large margin. Users report extremely high delight for the 5 Star application, while Plenti users are not satisfied, and growing more and more disappointed over time.
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Tablets are a wonderful device for getting work done while you are on the go, but the market has gotten so cluttered it is difficult to identify the best devices. Major manufacturers Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung all offer several different tablets with a variety of sizes and functions. Among the high end models from these tech giants, Apple’s iPad Pro is the most well liked, while Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4 receives the most consumer feedback but is the least liked of the bunch (the size of the bubbles in the chart below represents consumer review volume by week).
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What is the Internet of Things? IoT can encompass such a broad network of connected devices that it is becoming difficult to define. We ‘asked’ everyone who is talking about IoT on Twitter what it means to them (by tracking the entire market discussion and analyzing the conversation). We found that when people talk about IoT, they are interested in Big Data, and the fact that the ever expanding IoT may even make Big Data Look Small. Wearables, Cloud, and Smart Home are also a large part of the IoT conversation as people discuss development of wearable sensors, healthcare implications of connected devices, and how to compute all the collected data.
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