The Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month did not turn out to be the stage for a battle to the death between Amazon, Google, and Apple in the smart home. There was a plethora of product announcements in this area, each a little victory for one of the big three consumer brands, but no one dealt a knock-out blow. And working in the background, cable TV giant Comcast prepared an opening salvo in its fight to sew up the Smart Home as a Service (SHaaS) market. Comcast has been developing its Xfinity Home platform for a few years now, and has just opened the doors for third-party integrations – setting the stage for a licensing business that could go global,…