The smart home technology space at the moment requires a lot of 'leg-work' by the consumer. Huawei predicts a partnership between vendors and telecommunications companies to provide a unified solution will bring smart homes into the mainstream.
A 'smart home' can be categorised as any house with an automated security system. However, smart home technology expands to smart meters, motion sensors, temperature control, surveillance, door sensors, smoke detectors, and smart appliances.
Although the concept of home automation has been around for decades, it has only ever been available to the very wealthy or tech-savvy and patient hobbyists. This is because it requires manual custom installation of a lot of different parts and network knowledge.
This week, during a visit to Huawei's product exhibition hall in Shenzhen, China, South-East-African journalists were shown the company's vision of how a mainstream smart home will work.
There will be a central router in each home that controls all technology inside and out of the house. All gadgets, automation and sensors will be controlled through a smartphone app.
Huawei's role in this arrangement would be to forge relationships with the vendors and create the technology used in the router. The company would then provide a unified solution to telcos, which would set up and provide the network to allow the smart home to run smoothly and mainstream.
Some global communications companies are already providing variations of this solution, such as AT&T, China Unicom, Swisscom, China Telecom and Telef'onica.
Huawei says telcos need to extend to other industries as the traditional environment changes. The company believes this will be extremely profitable because people are relying more on their smartphones within their home environment, and because the Internet is getting faster and becoming more affordable.
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