Smart house manager – Newspaper Kommersant No. 166 (7367) dated 09/09/2022

Yandex is preparing to release a gateway for smart home devices, designed, according to a Kommersant source, for peripherals with support for the Zigbee local wireless communication protocol. It should become an alternative to cloud services for a smart home, the support of which was stopped by foreign vendors. Yandex Station of the second generation already knows how to work as a Zigbee gateway, but the company does not have its own light bulbs or sensors that would use the protocol. This summer, sales of Zigbee-enabled devices are up 40% from last summer, distributors say.

“Kommersant” found in the Russian part of the register of declarations of compliance with the EAEU a mention of the “smart home center Yandex Hub”. The declaration was registered on September 2, the Swiss subsidiary of Yandex, Intertech Services AG, is listed as the manufacturer of the device.

A Kommersant source in the consumer electronics market confirmed that Yandex is preparing to release a hub for managing smart home devices using the Zigbee protocol. Yandex refused to comment on information about the device to Kommersant: “We will return with details when they are available.”

Zigbee is a local wireless communication protocol designed for low power technology. It is used in smart home devices (lighting, sensors, etc.) certified by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (it has over 500 members, including Yandex and SberDevices). Zigbee is used for connections over distances of 10-100 m, allowing you to combine devices from different manufacturers, regardless of any Internet service. At the same time, the hub (can also be called a gateway), to which devices are connected via the Zigbee protocol, can itself connect to the Internet in order to control the smart home remotely and with the help of voice assistants.

Zigbee-enabled devices are positioned as an alternative to those that connect directly to the Internet via Wi-Fi and depend on vendor support. After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, at least two cloud service providers stopped supporting integrations with smart home systems from Russian companies. So, lighting control from Philips Hue has disappeared from the list of services that can be connected to the Yandex smart home. Following US sanctions against Sberbank, Tuya, whose cloud platform powered Sber devices, stopped servicing them.

The “smart” column “Yandex Station” of the second generation, presented at the end of 2021 and released on May 31, is so far the only company device with Zigbee support. Yandex has a line of smart lamps and sockets, but they connect directly to the Internet via Wi-Fi. Instead of its own Zigbee peripherals, Yandex sells Chinese Aqara devices with a column. In the smart home segment, Yandex competes with Xiaomi, some of whose devices also use the Zigbee protocol.

The emergence of the new “Station” had a positive effect on the popularity of Zigbee, but devices with its support showed moderate growth even before the release of the column, Stanislav Soltitsky, Deputy Director for Strategic Development of Marvel Distribution, told Kommersant: “We see a stable, but not yet explosive growth, by 40% during the summer of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021.” At the same time, he notes that “the mass consumer is just beginning to understand the difference between the smart home protocols.”

Yandex Hub will attract an audience that is not interested in the additional features of the Station, says Denis Buivolov, an analyst at BCS World of Investments. In his opinion, the company will not aim to produce its own Zigbee-enabled lamps and sockets, as it is difficult for it to compete with foreign manufacturers: “But focusing on building a hub for such devices is an interesting strategy.” Konstantin Ankilov, CEO of TMT Consulting, also believes that Yandex retains the production of smart home centers, and leaves the production of components to third-party companies. However, the expert considers this strategy not the most successful, because as a result “they tear their own ecosystem in two.”

Yuri Litvinenko