What Nest's product shutdown says about the Internet of Things

BY CHRISTINA WARREN

4/05/2016

Analysis

Nest is dropping support for one of its products on May 15. More than just dropping support, the product will cease to work entirely.

The product isn’t one of Nest’s branded lines – it’s not the thermostat, the smoke alarm or the Nest Cam. Instead it's the Revolv smart home hub.

Nest acquired Revolv in 2014 and stopped selling the product – which was one of the early home automation hubs – almost immediately.

On May 15, that will no longer be the case. On its website, Revolv’s co-founders write:

So we’re pouring all our energy into Works with Nest and are incredibly excited about what we’re making. Unfortunately, that means we can’t allocate resources to Revolv anymore and we have to shut down the service. As of May 15, 2016, your Revolv hub and app will no longer work.

Revolv users – and there aren’t many of them – are upset. On Medium, Revolv owner Arlo Gilbert wrote about how the service will cease to work and what kind of implications that means for users.

He writes:

Is the era of IoT bringing an end to the concept of ownership? Are we just buying intentionally temporary hardware? It feels like it. I own a Commodore 64 that still works.

The reality of connected devices

The story of Revolv is a cautionary tale, and it’s one we’ve heard before. It’s not unusual – or even uncommon – for companies to shut-down services after a period of time or end-of-life products.

What is less common is for a product to simply stop functioning, as the Revolv will in May.

As Gilbert says on Medium:

Imagine if you bought a Dell computer and Dell then informed you that when your warranty ends your computer will power down.

Imagine if Apple put out a new policy that not only won’t they replace the device for defects, but they will actually be bricking your phone 12 months after purchase.

In fairness to Nest, the Revolv – while an interesting product – wasn’t one that had many users. It hasn’t been sold since 2014.

And 18 months after the acquisition, shutting down the service attached to the app/hub seems totally fair, especially for the small number of people involved. It took the better part of a month for anyone to even notice/write about this, so the affected userbase has to be extremely small.

Still, the total shutdown assumes that the Revolv could in no way exist or operate without connecting to a centralized server and that it would be impossible to use the hub in a local-only mode.

That’s possible, but it seems more likely that the Nest team just didn’t want to invest resources in allowing the small number of remaining users the ability to use the device locally, sans the connected service.

And, fair enough. Companies shouldn’t necessarily be required to support products in perpetuity – but it does raise interesting questions about how the nature of the devices we buy in the age of Internet of Things is different than it was even five years ago.

My Blu-ray player from six years ago can’t access Amazon anymore and the Netflix experience is basically broken – but it still plays Blu-ray and DVD discs.

An old iPad from 2010 that hasn’t had a software update since iOS 5 will still serve web pages – even if the browser is incredibly old – and the apps that don’t require more modern versions and API calls will still run.

There is a difference between no longer maintaining an app service that would allow a user to control their smart devices remotely and simply turning off all functionality of the device.

There is a difference between no longer maintaining an app service that would allow a user to control their smart devices remotely and simply turning off all functionality of the device.

But in the future, that distinction may be going away. As I wrote earlier this year, the upgrade proposition when it comes to smart devices is inherently different than it was before.

As consumers, it’s no longer about buying a product and hoping it will still be fast and perform its functions in few years, there are real, valid concerns for the software and security updates that those devices will get. It’s reasonable to approach buying these types of devices with some apprehension because it’s possible the company behind the device may go out of business or just choose to stop supporting what you own.

Broader concerns about Nest

What is equally notable about Nest’s decision to shutter the Revolv hub and service is that the company doesn’t have anything to replace it with. Arlo Gilbert can buy a replacement hub from someone like Samsung’s SmartThings – but Nest doesn’t have a smart home automation product in its portfolio.

That’s troubling for some very different reasons. As The Information reported last month, Nest is facing a lot of challenges. The Information’s story was full of details about infighting, culture clashes and missed product dates.

A would-be smart hub dubbed Flintstone has apparently been in the works for years, but the product has yet to materialize. Meanwhile. competitors like Amazon are re-defining the smart home space with products like the Amazon Echo.

Nest is going to need to step-up – and sooner rather than later – if it wants to keep its reputation as being the one of the leaders in the connected device space.

For the company, it doesn’t look good that it is retiring an entire product category without any way to replace it.

Buyer beware

We’re still super early in the evolution of the Internet of Things. I’m not cautioning consumers against buying into new technology – the only way these devices get better, smarter and more adroit is with mass adoption – but buyers do need to recognize that the world of connected devices is different than unconnected devices.

This stuff isn’t going to last forever and we don’t know what upgrade and support cycles will look like. That’s markedly different than the way we used to buy gadgets. Sure, there was always the risk that a company would drop support for a product 49 days after release, but the risk of a product just not working anymore was significantly less.

In this new era, it’s important to think about the potential that your entire home could just stop working – and planning for those scenarios.

It’s also time for companies behind those products to recognize that the expectations buyers have for their products and the expectations they have for supporting said products aren’t always going to be in alignment.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

http://mashable.com/2016/04/04/revolv-smart-home-shutdown/#GIaUxflQHPqw