Zonoff Adds ZigBee and Bluetooth Smart to Latest Hub for Staples Connect Platform

The addition of the fuller featured hub triggered a drop in price for the existing Linksys router with Wi-Fi and Z-Wave, bringing it to $49.99, Cooper said. Competing on price is as important as offering choices to consumers for Zonoff and Staples, which launched the Staples Connect product line with the Linksys hub at $99. "There is no monthly cloud service fee,” he said, which differentiates the Zonoff platform from smart home platforms from service providers including ADT, AT&T, Comcast and higher-end offerings from Lowe’s’ Iris platform.

Zonoff will also add Microsoft’s Xbox platform over time as part of Microsoft’s overall plan for its platform that encompasses mobile devices through console gaming. For that, Zonoff envisions a user experience tailored to the “sit-back” experience of the living room using a TV remote control, Cooper said. “It will be a simplified version of the user interface.” He cited an example Zonoff demonstrated in a hotel suite at CES last year of the Staples Connect platform via a plug-in app on a Samsung smart TV. “You don’t want all the features in a full-blown browser or user experience up on your TV,” he said.

Cooper gave an example of future integration with the Xbox platform and other connected experiences in the home. The doorbell rings, which triggers the videogame on the TV to freeze so that the front door webcam video feed shows who’s there. The user can pause the game, use the remote control to unlock the smart lock and the door then automatically locks five seconds after the friend enters the home, he explained. “There are so many TVs now that have connected capabilities, so there’s a lot of power there.”

Bluetooth LE, also called Bluetooth Smart, and ZigBee are just other tools in Zonoff’s “tool chest” for wireless radio frequency connectivity, Cooper said. The company wants to “maintain the position that we’re agnostic with all these different standards and our job is to make it easy for the consumer to navigate among all of them without confusion,” he said. Someone may want a particular wall sconce that matches the décor “and she doesn’t care if it’s ZigBee or Z-Wave,” Cooper said. “So we make that transparent for the consumer.”

That integration is Zonoff’s primary differentiator, Cooper said. “We can take a ZigBee light and a Z-Wave light, synchronize them and raise them up and dim them down in synchronization,” he said. “No other platform can do that. Our communication engine is so fast, we can keep all these devices in sync.”

While Staples is “a great channel partner,” Zonoff has broader aspirations beyond the office supply channel. “It just made sense to go to the largest retailer in office supplies,” Cooper said, “but that’s one retailer of many across many categories.” Zonoff is talking to many companies about platform opportunities, he said. “There’s a lot of interest in this right now, in terms of companies wanting to leverage their brand,” he said. “This is a big platform play for a lot of these companies, and it could have a big impact in terms of market share moving forward.” Zonoff is also looking to the homebuilder market, Cooper said, a space Control4 and Savant have also targeted.

“Everybody has their own agenda,” Cooper said of the nascent smart home market. “That’s why we accommodate them all. There’s room for all of them." He thinks "no one company is going to rule this market,” comparing it with the diversity of options in the automotive market, he said. “There are a lot of different brands for a lot of different price points.”