Apple, Google, Amazon and the Zigbee Alliance have joined forces to develop a smart-home standard that will mean new devices are likely to be compatible with any of their hubs and voice assistants.
Overseen by the Zigbee Alliance, whose board members include representatives of IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy and Wulian,  the Project Connected Home Over IP initiative aims to create a unified connectivity protocol that is open-source and royalty-free.
The goal is to make it easier both for consumers to build their ideal smart-home environment and also for manufacturers to develop new products.
Aim is to create a standardised system As it stands, developers need to build integration for Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and any smart-home service separately, resulting in a situation where few products are universally compatible.
With a standardised system, the barriers to building and buying such devices should be lowered, and consumers will be able to choose Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant and others according to their preference.

"Technology in everyday homes has evolved since the start of the decade," wrote Google vice-president of engineering Nik Sathe and Google Nest principal engineer Grant Erickson in a blog post announcing the initiative. "Almost every part of the home can be connected to the internet, allowing local or remote control of...