Apple and Google are on a track for competition -- or possibly cooperation -- in yet another growing tech battlefield, reports contended Tuesday, with the Silicon Valley titans focused on the market for "smart homes."
Google has already made a big play into the market -- which connects common household items to the Internet to make them accessible remotely, along with other new tricks -- with its $3.2 billion acquisition of Palo Alto's Nest Labs earlier this year. The Financial Times reported Tuesday morning that Apple would announce its first foray into smart homes Monday during the keynote address for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
The report says that Apple will introduce software that connects a user's lights, home security and other appliances, making them accessible through the Cupertino company's popular devices, such as the iPhone and iPad. Instead of accessing separate apps to turn off lights or begin preheating the stove for dinner, the new offering could allow users to access all their connected devices in one place.
"It is unclear exactly what Apple may be planning, but we suspect in its initial incarnation it will be a consolidating app for connected home devices, similar to what Apple has done with its GameCenter and Passbook applications," Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt wrote in a note Tuesday.
The plan could boost sales for Apple's mobile products as well as offer interesting possible roles for other equipment as well as pathways to future offerings designed specifically for the smart home.
"More interesting would be the Apple TV peripheral turning into a home controller that provides the ability for consumers to automate scripts across multiple disparate apps," McCourt noted of one such possibility.
The Financial Times reported that Apple plans to play up the security of its offering in direct opposition to Google, which said in a filing last week that it foresees a future with ads served through the variety of new devices connecting to the Internet; Apple derives its revenues from the products it sells, while Google's main moneymaker is digital advertising.
However, the developing market could be a strong one for Apple and Google to find mutual gain, since Apple will not immediately be providing the hardware to which its software connects. Nest products are already sold in Apple stores, and The Information reported Tuesday that the Mountain View Internet giant is looking at purchasing Dropcam, which produces small cameras that homeowners can easily install and access through the Internet, to add to Nest's portfolio.
"It sounds like Apple's early strategy will lean on partners ... and it's hard to imagine a better, more Apple-like smart home partner than Nest," Quartz reporter Dan Frommer wrote Tuesday.
No matter the mechanics of the market, the opportunity is too large for either tech giant to pass up, McCourt wrote, predicting that the market could eventually produce revenues of $100 billion and more in the coming years.
"It is unlikely that any one company or even one channel strategy will win in the near term given the enormity of the opportunity," he wrote.
Apple finished Tuesday's trading session at its highest closing price in nearly two years, gaining 1.9 percent to $625.63.Google added 2 percent to close at $574.87, its highest closing price in slightly more than two months.
market report: Intuit buys Check, Workday jumps after earnings
Wall Street enjoyed strong gains across the board Tuesday as traders returned from the Memorial Day holiday, with Apple and Google joining other Silicon Valley tech stocks to push the SV150 and Nasdaq indexes to big gains.
Intuit gained 0.7 percent to $80.14 after announcing the acquisition of Palo Alto mobile bill-pay startup Check for roughly $360 million in cash. While the company seems to offer similar functionality to Mint.com-- which Intuit purchased four years ago for $170 million -- the Mountain View software company intimated in its announcement that Check will be an active bill-paying service while Mint and its Quicken accounting software will be used to store and track personal financial data. Check, which began operations as PageOnce in 2008, had raised nearly $50 million in venture financing from Menlo Ventures and others and claimed late last year to have grown to nearly 10 million customers processing half a billion dollars annually on the service.
Workday closed with a 4.9 percent increase at $82.13, then jumped to more than $86 in late trading after the Pleasanton cloud-software company announced quarterly earnings, which showed a net loss of $59.4 million, or 32 cents a share, on sales of $159.7 million. Intel increased 1.6 percent to $26.71 after announcing a new initiative with Chinese chipmaker Rockchip that will produce processors for inexpensive Android tablets, which could boost the Santa Clara chipmaker's mobile push. Twitter broke a nine-session losing streak by adding a penny to close at $30.51 as an eMarketer report showed Asia to be the biggest growth area for the San Francisco social-networking service; Twitter also signed an advertising deal with Omnicom that could boost revenues more than $200 million in the next two years. Facebook jumped 3.5 percent to $63.48 after an Iranian judge ordered CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer questions about privacy, and Netflix dropped 0.9 percent to $398.81 after nailing down rights to Sony animated movies.
Up: Splunk, Workday, Zynga, Facebook, Yelp, LinkedIn, Applied Materials, NetApp, SolarCity, Tesla, Google, Apple, Nvidia, Salesforce, Intel, SunPower, Gilead, Adobe, SanDisk
Down: Hewlett-Packard, Netflix, Oracle, eBay, Ruckus
The SV150 index of Silicon Valley's largest tech companies: Up 19.01, or 1.33 percent, to 1,453.3
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index: Up 51.26, or 1.22 percent, to 4,237.07
The blue chip Dow Jones industrial average: Up 69.23, or 0.42 percent, to 16,675.5
And the widely watched Standard & Poor's 500 index: Up 11.38, or 0.6 percent, to 1,911.91
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