Apple trying to improve its smart home business

Feb 17, 2019 08:26 GMT  ·  By

Apple is pushing harder on several fronts in order to revamp its smart home strategy, and one of the company’s latest moves is actually the hiring of a high-profile executive.

Sam Jadallah, a former Microsoft employee and owner of failed smart lock company Otto, will be joining Apple specifically with the purpose of helping the company catch up with Google and Amazon in the smart home race.

Apple has more or less lost the battle here, despite the HomePod originally being praised by many people in the industry. As CNBC notes, Apple hopes to win back the connected living room, and the new employee will have a major contribution in this regard.

While an announcement over Jadallah joining Apple hasn’t been offered, the former Microsoftie has already updated his LinkedIn profile to state that he’s working for the Cupertino-based tech giant.

A Microsoftie for more than 10 years

Jadallah previously spent more than a decade at Microsoft and later ran a start-up called Otto. The company was often described as “the Apple of smart locks,” and part of its workforce included former Apple engineers.

The cited source mentions there’s no information right now on whether Jadallah would bring these employees with him at to Apple, but there’s a chance that at least some of them would join the company in order to work in the home division. There are several job openings in this particular unit at Apple, so former Otto employees could help fill in the spots to help Jadallah in his mission to revamp the smart home business.

There are many questions that still need to be answered regarding this new hiring, but Apple’s making big efforts to grow in the connected living room, so expect other similar news in the short term, especially because Cupertino needs to act fast to get closer to Google’s Home and Amazon’s Echo.