Will Apple Carkey begin the end of the humble key?
Nick Dutton, CEO of Brisant-Secure, explains the new Apple CarKey in the light of what it will mean to consumers and the trade. Is it the end of the humble key? Not quite yet as he explains
In February 2014, the association with car manufacturers and Apple went as far as ensuring there was a tray to put a phone in. Then in March that year, Apple announced CarPlay. The ability to have our smartphone seamlessly integrate music, navigation and messages with our cars, was too great a temptation for car manufacturers. Now, 6 years on, it’s really hard to find a car manufacturer that hasn’t forged a relationship, embraced and adopted Apple tech into their cars.
Amidst the mayhem of the last few months, Apple launched Apple CarKey. It is what it sounds like. With Apple CarKey we will have the ability to not have to carry our car key with us but have our cars unlock as we approach them and allow them to start by simply putting our phone in that tray (which will now also charge it!). This means that a trip to the shops will mean we can unlock the car, start the car, drive to the shop, lock the car, pay for the shopping, and get back home whilst only needing our phone. All of this will be possible without having to take the phone out of our pocket.
Demand for smart home stuff is already growing. With every Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, Hive or Ring doorbell more and more consumers are introduced to the ‘smart home’. Invariably once they get the bug, they bolt more things on, until they eventually have a home as smart as many of the newbuilds already being sold with Ultion SMART ready fitted. Then we see organic growth as their friends see it, want it and go buy it.
Why is this relevant to those of us that need doors to be sold? Homeowning drivers have a drill to go through when we go to work, the shop or anywhere. It’s the car key, phone, house key, lock the door and go. Apple CarKey means that we will no longer need to look for the car key. If our phone is in our pocket (or hand) we can just go, drive and pay – leaving us to find just the door key and lock it mechanically behind us. We all generally have our house and car key together but, in a world where we don’t need a car key that leaves just the house key. This highly engineered piece of metal designed to fit your door to within 0.1mm becomes an encumbrance and all because you can start your car with your phone!
Brisant-Secure is a business built on high security locks and keys, so this is central to our being. It is also why we were keen to make sure that when the homeowner is fed up with having to go hunting for just the house key that there was an answer. An answer that gave proven security. An answer that didn’t turn the front door into something from the Starship Enterprise. It’s also an answer that gives control as well as information. Essentially an answer that didn’t mean they had to compromise on anything they already had. It needed to operate as before and look as before, yet give more.
Ultion Smart is already the ‘go-to’ tech sales add-on for over 400 businesses because it delivers everything that customers need and will need. Ultion Smart does not pre-prescribe Apple Homekit, Samsung SmartThings, Zigbee or any of the other smart names banded about. It works with all of them or none of them – it is truly multilingual! How long do we have before people expect to have doors operated by phones? It took 6 years for the introductions, allegiances, tech share and implementation of Apple CarPlay. To put Apple CarKey into cars that have already embraced smart phone collaboration is a much smaller leap. And, for those of us that still love highly engineered keys that go into a keyhole, turn and open our front door Ultion Smart still comes with a key.
