“Apple joins Amazon, Google, Zigbee Alliance and board members, to form working group to develop an open standard for smart home devices.
Apple is taking a major step in its approach to the smart home by joining a new industry effort, Project Connected Home over IP. This initiative aims to develop an open standard that will increase the compatibility of smart home products across multiple platforms, with security and privacy as fundamental design tenets. The new standard will make it even simpler for developers to build one device that is compatible with smart home services and voice assistants, while ensuring consumers can easily choose smart home products that seamlessly work together.
To accelerate the development of the new universal standard, Apple is open-sourcing portions of its HomeKit Accessory Development Kit (ADK). HomeKit has grown to become the most extensive, powerful and secure smart home platform available on more than a billion iOS and iPadOS devices. Built from the ground up to protect customer data, HomeKit and the Home app use innovative privacy technologies and techniques to help minimize the amount of data anyone — including Apple — can access as well as powerful security features that protect personal information. By open-sourcing its HomeKit technology, Apple will be helping to jump-start the initiative and ultimately deliver an even better experience to customers.
Starting today, developers can use the HomeKit Open Source ADK to prototype non-commercial smart home accessories. Apple will also contribute its HomeKit Accessory Protocol to the working group.
Existing HomeKit accessories will continue to work after the new protocol becomes available since Apple plans to continue to support HAP for communication with smart home accessories in its ecosystem.”