Operators usually try in vain to emulate Apple’s extravagant launch events, or its control of a unified user experience from handsets to cars. But Orange was having a good try at its Hello conference in Paris last week, at which it announced a string of devices and services from mobile to TV, and the hub which it hopes will control them all.
With Apple reportedly reworking Apple TV to be a fully-fledged home hub, controlling media, communications and smart home appliances, operators need to move quickly to have any hope of seizing control of that central platform.
The stakes are high –Apple, Amazon and Google have the branding and user experience expertise to tie together all aspects of a household’s digital life, and can integrate hubs tightly with smartphones, which can act as remote controls. But operators do still control the main broadband line and the billing relationship, and they can (reluctantly perhaps) subsidize the hubs to encourage uptake. If they fail to build on those key advantages with attractive platforms and services, the dumb pipe fate really does await.
Orange unveiled a very determined attempt to avoid that, with an event deliberately reminiscent of another fruit-named company’s launches. It churned out gadgets and services for home automation, mobile payments, health monitoring, ‘everywhere’ media streaming and beacons – some new ideas, some polished-up old ones, but all ticking the current hot boxes in terms of the smart home, and the connected experience spanning every screen from TV to phone, fridge to thermostat to car.
The launch revolved around the Homepoint hub, which houses a charging center (wireless Qi pad and two USB ports); an SD card slot for streaming media to screens around the home; and a Bluetooth connection to allow up to four devices to stream audio to a hi-fi. Finally, Homepoint has a button for initiating WPS secure WiFi connections for visitors, keeping them off the home network. Homepoint will go on sale in November for under €80 ($100), said Orange CEO Stephane Richard, who hailed the “dawn of the era of connected objects”.
There were plenty of other products and services which could work alone or with Homepoint, though there is a sense that the way all these elements fit together is more obvious to Orange than its customers. Apple’s events may be packed with drama, but they are not usually packed with products – just a few new ones each year, and the firm’s skill lies in making it completely obvious why they all work together, and why the owner of one iDevice should logically buy all the others. Orange, by contrast, seemed to be hurling every idea its engineers could think of into one rather uncoordinated effort.
On the media side, it showed off Project Polaris, which Orange has been talking about for years – a common interface for all screens for video-on-demand, streaming TV, music and gaming. Among other things, it allows users to start viewing on one screen, pause the content and then resume on a different device. This will be available in France by year end, and Orange will also be supporting Netflix, which is already offered by rival Bouygues through its set-top boxes.
On the home automation front, Orange is lagging SFR and its Homebox, but now has its own offering, Homelive. Like Apple, Orange has left its platform open to third party apps and objects, in order to build a broad ecosystem, while SFR’s is a closed system. Homelive will be a service priced from €9.99 a month, available from October 23. The mix-and-match platform will have options including smoke detectors, motion detectors, weather stations, power controllers and other devices from partners including Philips, Netatmo and Fibaro.
For payments, Orange has extended its Orange Cash offering to three more cities after initial tests in Strasbourg and Caen, and has introduced a two-step authentication system called Mobile Connect to improve security.
Meanwhile, it also added Pops, a battery-powered M2M device which will be the foundation for new inhouse and partner services – the operator showed it being used in smart clothing from Cityzen Science. And no modern launch is complete without a beacon – Orange Beacon is a Bluetooth Low Energy device for retailers and museums, which will go on sale shortly for around €40.