This article originally appeared on Builder.
Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple want something home builders, apartment developers, and remodelers have that nobody else has.
Home builders, apartment developers, and remodelers have an intimate relationship with what consumers spend more money, more time, and more emotional investment in than in any other facet of their lives: their homes.
Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple know that, and they want a bigger, more powerful, more meaningful, more moment-to-moment connection to their potential addressable universe, which is you and me, her and him and them. At home, or not, but especially at home.
Thing is, home builders, apartment developers, and remodelers--having done their work and run their businesses as they have for as long as they have--may not be fully aware of the unique, exclusive, mental and emotional tie they have with people who live in their homes and communities. They may be unaware of the fact that Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple would like to piggyback on the capital builders and developers and remodelers invest to use their homes and communities as a built-out infrastructure through which to deliver services and products.
They want to be able to talk to, listen to, serve, delight, teach, learn from--and protect--people living in their homes and communities because that's the key to their ability to grow their businesses. What better way to do that than to leverage resources and investment builders pour into their homes and communities as a networked vehicle to pull in information and data and push out products and services.
Tuesday, Amazon announced it would acquire Santa Monica, Calif.-based Ring, maker of the popular eponymous video doorbell, for what home tech and retail analysts estimate to be about $1.1 billion. The deal expands an already-existing portfolio of Amazon products and services in the entry-door, indoor security area--its homegrown Amazon Cloud Cam and Blink, which it acquired this past December. The new addition of Ring--with whom Alexa already has been bonding--can not only add momentum to its recently rolled-out Amazon Key service, which can remotely allow delivery-people, dog walkers, or housekeepers access to homes, but positions Amazon for something bigger yet.
The security business, which like the healthcare business, is growing as components of consumer household spending.
In the 1980s, two consumer products giants, Procter & Gamble and Unilever, discovered something in their consumer data and research that would change them as sellers, primarily, of soaps and detergents. They learned that cleanliness and hygiene related in people's lives to something more than cleanliness and hygiene; it was about self-care, about individual agency in matters of comfort, healthfulness, and pain management, well-being.
In this way P&G and Unilever discovered ways to put themselves more entirely into the mix of people's lives, from the moment they were born until they'd taken their last breath. Today those companies' brand portfolios are replete with health and beauty products, remedies, room air fresheners, and vitamin-boosting foods and supplements, and they've both grown exponentially since the days they woke up and realized that soap was more than about soap.
Amazon, unapologetically and in an admirable way, seeks world domination. It wants to accomplish that by being best at understanding where consumers show a willingness to spend money today, and a propensity to pay even more for more value.
In a moment where the national political, social, and cultural conversation is powerfully preoccupied with safety, personal rights to privacy, and the delicate balances of both, Amazon and Google are pushing for entree into that balance.
"Can I have both stronger connections with the outside world, deliveries, services, real-time contact, and know that my home is protected and safe, and at the same time not have my right to privacy interfered with?
That's where Amazon may be going with Ring. New York Times staffer Nick Wingfield writes:
Luke Schoenfelder, chief executive of Latch, a start-up that makes a family of smart locks, said he believed that Amazon would make a more serious effort to enter the home security market and compete against companies like ADT, Comcast and Alarm.com. Mr. Schoenfelder speculated that Amazon could seek to make home security part of its Prime membership service, which today includes free and fast delivery of orders and video streaming.
Americans, increasingly, have a tall order when it comes to a blend of safety, privacy, and immediate access to services in their homes. They've shown a willingness to pay for that tall order, and Amazon, like Google and Apple, want to be there to offer some semblance of filling that need. Increasingly, they see a home's four walls and a community's four boundaries each as a service delivery distribution node.
