Immedia, who developed the Blink line of cameras, has been reportedly trying to sell itself since Midsummer. And today it was announced that Amazon is acquiring them.
Note 1st of all that Blink does hold patents on their battery – operated technology, which allows them to have longer battery life than other Wi-Fi cameras.
But Amazon just released their own brand camera about a month ago. So what’s going on?
Does Amazon want that battery technology? And if so, is it intended for something more than cameras?
Or do they want blink’s new security system, still in development, which is intended as a low-cost competitor to nest secure. (And potentially the new ADT/SmartThings security panel, although the SmartThings offering includes fire monitoring and the other two do not.)
There has been a lot of discussion in the last few days about a very sudden blink announcement that they were shutting down the integration with outside services, particularly with the one that was used with SmartThings. They do have a IFTTT channel, but it is much more limited in its features in that as you cannot control individual cameras without buying a separate “sync.”
I got that one wrong, as it seemed clear that they were looking for a partner and that they were probably closing down some potential security vulnerabilities, but I had guessed that they were looking for a partner to help them develop HomeKit compatibility.
Instead, they’re going all in on the Alexa Ecosystem.
So I guess the next thing to watch will be whether Blink gets integrated with the new echo plus or not. The current Amazon brand camera does NOT integrate with that system. Also a sign that Amazon doesn’t have a single driving strategy in the IOT space, but is pursuing specific use cases in market niches where they see opportunities.
I will post a few links on this acquisition in a minute. But I thought it deserved its own thread as the ones about the SmartThings integration being pulled are very specific to that factor.