Race for the ‘smart home’ rising between Apple, Amazon and Google
Price in the contest is the connected household
In less than a year, Amazon’s combination of the Echo speaker system and the Alexa voice-controlled digital assistant has come close to delivering on the elusive promise of easy-to-use technology that can control gadgets in the home with a few spoken words.
Yet Amazon.com’s surprise success sets up a long-term battle with Apple and Alphabet’s Google for primacy in the connected household. And the contours of that competition are following a classic tech industry dynamic.
Amazon is pursuing an open-systems approach that allows quick development of many features, while Apple is taking a slower route, asserting more control over the technology in order to assure security and ease-of-use.

The strategic importance of the “connected home” niche looms large: Amazon wants a way to own its customer interactions -mainly shopping online - without an Apple phone or a Google Web browser as an intermediary.
Apple needs to keep the iPhone at the centre of customers’ lives, and has built a whole home automation architecture, called Homekit, into its smartphone.