Earlier this week, Andy Rubin, the man credited with the creation of the Android operating system unveiled his new (Android) mobile phone. Called ‘Essential Phone’ it offers some impressive specifications, an edge-to-edge screen, and a clip on 360° camera.

The camera attaches to a pair of magnetic connectors which will allow phone owners to attach a variety of devices and gadgets. Essential says it’s working on a number of such devices and may open this up to third parties at some point soon.

Opinion in the technical press is divided over the phone’s likelihood of success, but few people have devoted as much attention to the other products announced by Rubin.

Alongside the phone, Essential is also launching a voice-enabled AI assistant, similar to the Amazon Echo or Google Home, which will confusingly also be called ‘Home’.

However, it’s the operating system for the device, Ambient OS, which offers the promise of understanding and automating your home, controlling all of your smart devices and even protecting your privacy while doing so.

Open Ecosystem

Ambient OS wants to power an ‘open ecosystem’ that would support competing products – including other virtual assistants such as Alexa, Siri and Google’s own Home.

Which is ambitious to say the least. While ‘playing nice’ is not unheard of within the tech sector, many of the large companies with their own solutions are unlikely to look favourably on being subservient to a third party device.

Rubin plans to open source the operating system, in much the same way as Android. Given the fact that Android now dominates the mobile market (over 80% of smartphones are Android devices according to recent research).

While there are challenges galore, bringing the same sensibility to the hugely fragmented smart home/Internet of Things market, could give Ambient OS a huge advantage in the rapidly evolving smart devices market.

Fragmentation

Ian Smith, the managing director of embedded systems experts Abelon, said, “The current mis-mash of open and closed standards littered around the Internet-of-Things product landscape make integration of products from different vendors a bit of a nightmare, often requiring bespoke hardware and software to knit the various parts together.

“The idea of a central smart hub as a convergence point with open APIs and published hardware interfaces which is capable of talking to every other smart device in your home is a powerful vision. While it’s not a new idea by any means, doing it properly is definitely a challenge and you just look at the major players like Google, Apple and Cisco who are still struggling towards that end goal to see how tough it will be.

“You certainly can’t fault Andy’s ambition – the idea that their smart hub could run Siri, Alexa, Google’s Assistant, or whatever other virtual assistant consumers want to use is lofty indeed, but just maybe he is the guy to pull it off.”

IoT Developers

Having a unifying framework for developing and utilising smart devices was also a key for Raj Sark, the founder and chief exec of Myxupo: “The announcement of the Phone and Home with ambient OS does sound like a small step by a man, but a giant leap for connected Things. The specs are brilliant and we look to see how it lives up to the promise as if it does it is a game-changer for IoT developers like us”

The challenges of bringing together some of the world’s largest companies was not lost on Gordon Coulter, CEO of business technology specialists Exmos: “We don’t know a lot yet, but there’s no doubt Ambient OS is an ambitious undertaking. Battling Amazon & Google in the smart home space may be a challenge, but the guy who co-founded Android may just be the guy to do it.”

The company’s focus on security was also a welcome change for Coulter. “I’m particularly interested and impressed that Essential are tackling data security from the ground up by processing locally rather than in the Cloud, with data privacy being such an important topic at the moment. For this reason, this could be the first real effort to bring IoT into the workplace. But there’s a seriously long way to go, and who’s to say Google, Amazon or Apple won’t get there first.”

There’s little detailed information available on Essential’s Home or Ambient OS at the moment. While customers can already order the Essential phone, there’s no launch date, or price for Home. Developers can however sign up to access the software development kit (SDK).

In terms of ambition and potential for disrupting the nascent IoT market, the anticipation for Ambient OS is only going to grow.