Wink has been acquired by lifestyle technology company i.am+.
If you’re not familiar, i.am+ was founded by innovator and music artist will.i.am and has already shaken up the wearables industry with BUTTONS - premium wireless Bluetooth headphones.
I saw the email, but there has been no official press release from either company, no news coverage, not even any blog posts on either site.
If this is true, I think it’s bad news for wink users. There’s just no way that a company like I.am+ Has the resources to support a smart home platform. And I think it would have to mean that there was no interest from anybody else, another bad sign.
It seems really weird coming so soon after the official announcements that the wink hub two is now included in Amazon home services installation program.
So I see two possibilities:
It was a joke email created by a Wink staffer to test something and accidentally got released into the wild
it’s for real, but got accidentally released early before the official press releases and blog posts went out. In which case, again, I don’t think it’s good news for Wink users. But we’ll see.
edited to update: looks like this is being confirmed on their official Twitter feed, but still nothing on the two companies’ sites and no press release. So I’m going for 2) at this point.
.
The only way this could be good news would be if I.am+'s Apple connection ties in with Wink’s stated comments in the last few weeks that they intend to be “first in line” for HomeKit compatibility for a multiprotocol hub. If they’re intending to be the HomeKit/Zwave option, then it’s a much more interesting deal. But that’s all pure speculation.
It wasn’t accidentally released, the Wink PR lady posted it on the Wink User Facebook group, saying “I wanted to give you guys a heads up before you get the email or see the press releases”. It was a really nice gesture on her part, I’m sure she’s totally gutted that she now works for the guy from the Black Eyed Peas who has failed at every tech thing he’s ever tried.
In other news, Amazon is working on its own smart home hub which will have at least a Zigbee radio. Most likely, it’ll be integrated into the next version of Echo.
7-11 is coming out with Wi-Fi hotdog cookers. The rollers have temperature sensors in them which can tell the exact temperature of the hotdogs. That information is then transmitted to the Internet. With an app, you can find out if your hotdog is done yet.
I was on Wink/Quirky years ago. If they had opened up their platform to 3rd party community devs (like ST did), I think they’d be in a much better position today. Honestly, that was the biggest deal breaker for me. I love this community and all the hard work the community devs and helpers do to make the ST platform amazing. Wink will NEVER have that.
However, with i.am+ acquiring them, I doubt we will be hearing much from Wink anymore.
It is truly stunning. But what is more stunning, is that Flex made a pretty penny on them (they paid 15 million for them back in November 2015). They released their first quarter results yesterday, and disclosure of selling Wink was in the footnotes.
“the company sold its Wink business to an unrelated third-party venture backed company in exchange for contingent consideration fair valued at $59.0 million and recognized a gain on sale of $38.7 million”