Philips and Apple Team Up to Market Smart LED Bulb

[Maura]

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Yahoo’s Small Business Advisor writes today that Philips has just launched an intelligent LED light bulb called the Hue 1.1, and has partnered with Apple in order to distribute the light bulb to early adopters by selling it in Apple stores. So what exactly are the main features of a “smart†light bulb? According to Philips, Hue has a geofencing feature meaning that it can be programmed (via an iOS app) by the user to change colour, or turn off or on when you enter or leave your home or office. In fact, Philips says that owners of Hue light bulbs, “don’t ever worry if [they’ve] switched [their] lights off or not. Just walk out the front door and they’ll switch themselves off.â€[/FONT]

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[FONT=&quot]Yahoo explains that the smart bulb also has an alarm feature, whereby it can be set to wake the owner up naturally by slowly becoming brighter at your chosen wake-up time. As you might expect, Hue has many other timer features, such as turning itself off, or flashing, or changing its colour at set times. Hue bulbs can even be configured to change colour for certain set events, such as letting you know when it’s raining (this one would be on all the time in the UK!), blinking to show when your sports team that you follow is starting to play, and you can even change the colour randomly via text message. Although this all sounds like fun, Hue bulbs have some practical uses too, such as flooding a room with bright light automatically if someone is moving around inside the house in the early hours of the morning, for example. This could be used to startle a burglar and alert the householder of their presence, or stop an elderly person from falling over and hurting themselves in the dark. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]As you might expect from all that, the bulbs are pretty pricey, with a starter set costing $200, and each Hue bulb costing $60. This price is expected to halve by 2020, however, and by 70% in the next 10 years. [/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Source:[/FONT] Philips Partners with Apple on Smart LED Bulb - Yahoo! Small Business Advisor