Second large company this week to rollback a change after public outcry, with Valve rolling back a change in CS:GO. I hope their marketing people take a lesson out of this.
Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform
11–20 of 166 posts
Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform
#12Wow. Most companies are deaf to user outrage. The original decision wasn't fantastic, but I understand the whole "Friends of..." certification route. At least in the future they'll be able to stick to "if it's not certified by us..." for customer support, which was likely the original impetus (along with a desire to cut off cheap alternatives to their devices). I'm not mad at this at all.
I'm not mad at this at all. I am. Because it is a way to extort money out of other ZigBee participants.
Sure, that's fair. But from their standpoint it's a bit "damned if you do, damned if you don't." This is conjecture, but I imagine supporting cheaper third-party devices is becoming a headache. In the last thread about this, a former ZigBee developer noted how difficult it was to code to the platform. It may not all be evil.
Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform
#13"We underestimated the impact this would have upon the small number of our customers" Do they really believe it is a small number of customers that use non-Philips light bulbs? I mean, good for them in reversing the decision, but the damage is already done (check out Amazon reviews for one) and it should have been easily foreseen.
Translation: "we'll do this to shut up the pro users that are generating all this bad P/R, and it really doesn't matter since 99.9% of our customers won't care about this anyway."
Can't say I disagree with the idea. Everyone wants a system like this to be open on principle, but in reality it won't really get used that much. This stuff is still too hard for the average consumer.
Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform
#14I'm glad to see they've reversed the decision. It was the only reasonable choice they had with such an immature market that could have them dethroned as the leader very quickly. Their reasons for lock-in made no sense. For a product like this compatibility is a feature and many people chose the Philips products because of the ecosystem of compatible products available, the ZigBee protocol and third-party light bulbs.
I'm sure that third-party products were causing problems, however, wholesale blocking of them via software update is a terrible solution. They, literally, turned out the lights on their customers. Meanwhile, I'd be willing to bet support costs immediately spiked -- people call support when things don't work and they just pushed out a solution that increased rather than decreased that.
Unfortunately, I think they've bruised their reputation quite a bit with this move. It's now delayed my purchase of such a product until I am convinced that they have a solid third-party certification program in place (with very low licensing fees) or (even better) a guarantee with the product that they won't try this again when the market is more mature and they have the option of ignoring complaining customers.
Their competitors could see a rise in sales by taking advantage of this blunder and committing to open protocols. I haven't looked at the landscape in this category, yet, and had just assumed I'd be buying the Philips Hue eventually, but they've motivated me to do more research.
Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform
#15The thing is, to me, the fact that they ever decided to do this in the first place means I will never buy Philips smart home products ever. They have proven they can't be trusted with this sort of power, and that is a one way trip. You don't come back from that, you don't get back off my list.
Either
A) You don't trust any large, publically traded company.
B) You don't understand how large, publically traded companies work.
This decision was made by someone in marketing. Phillips engineers (in this division) were ambivalent because it meant less verification and testing (yea!) but also means they have a less capable product. It got approved because someone (likely a director somewhere) put together a market strategy that showed they could make x dollars in the next 2 years doing this.
Public backlash was bigger than expected. VP gets involved. Decision is changed.
Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform
#16Wow. Most companies are deaf to user outrage. The original decision wasn't fantastic, but I understand the whole "Friends of..." certification route. At least in the future they'll be able to stick to "if it's not certified by us..." for customer support, which was likely the original impetus (along with a desire to cut off cheap alternatives to their devices). I'm not mad at this at all.
I'm not mad at this at all. I am. Because it is a way to extort money out of other ZigBee participants.
It's not extorting. It's making sure your house doesn't burn down because you bought the el cheapo bulb from knockoff brand C.
Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform
#17The funny part is that they claim to have broken their customers' previously working functionality in good faith. Who writes these things, and why do their supervisors allow them to keep working there?!?
It could be worse: "Some customers were involved in a darkness-related incident."
Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform
#18The thing is, to me, the fact that they ever decided to do this in the first place means I will never buy Philips smart home products ever. They have proven they can't be trusted with this sort of power, and that is a one way trip. You don't come back from that, you don't get back off my list.
I don't understand this reasoning. I believe Philips started the friends of Hue program to make sure third party products "just work" with Hue, the same as Philips products. They want to give consumers an "Apple like" experience where there is no hassle and no fiddling.
They reversed the decision because of the user outcry, they noticed a lot of users would rather risk stuff not working than not get them outright. This is a major step and I like that a lot. Being able to change your course to what users want instead of what you think is the most profitable should be applauded.
Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform
#19The thing is, to me, the fact that they ever decided to do this in the first place means I will never buy Philips smart home products ever. They have proven they can't be trusted with this sort of power, and that is a one way trip. You don't come back from that, you don't get back off my list.
Do you want to encourage the behavior of stubbornly sticking by an initial decision despite public outrage?
Re: Philips reverses decision to close the Hue Platform
#20The thing is, to me, the fact that they ever decided to do this in the first place means I will never buy Philips smart home products ever. They have proven they can't be trusted with this sort of power, and that is a one way trip. You don't come back from that, you don't get back off my list.
Were you going to buy any of their products in the first place?