GIGAOM ROADMAP, SAN FRANCISCO — Nest Lab’s smart and sexy thermostat is becoming the iPhone of home heating, says its designer, Tony “the Podfather” Fadell.
Speaking at the GigaOM Roadmap conference, Fadell described how a Texas utility called Reliant is using the Nest Learning Thermostat to attract customers.
“Nest is to Reliant what the iPhone was to AT&T,” said Fadell. It’s a killer piece of hardware that’s attracting customers to the utility in droves.
In Texas, the electricity market is deregulated. Customers can buy power from dozens of different utilites, the way cellphone customers can choose between several different mobile providers.
Here’s one of the utility’s new TV commercials, voiced by actor Matthew McConaughey (More here):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=D4UNA3EjxNs
The charming and charismatic Fadell was delighted by the ads, just one of several unpredictable developments in the ascent of the increasingly popular thermostat over the last year.
Fadell began his on-stage interview by noting he was on the same stage a year ago, right after Nest’s launch. At the time, he was nervous about its prospects. After all, as a former SVP at Apple, reporting directly to Steve Jobs, Fadell was better known for overseeing 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. (Although there is no one “Podfather,” Fadell can claim to be one of the gadget’s main architects, along with Jobs himself, Apple’s head designer Sir Jonathan Ive and the former head of hardware, Jon Rubinstein.)
A year ago, the first thing people remarked was: “A thermostat? Really?”
“I didn’t know if people would care about thermostats, like I did,” Fadell said. “But it turns out they do, like I thought.”
Fadell noted that the Nest has popped up in 63 countries, even though it is officially sold only in the US and Canada. Like the iPhone, there’s a grey market of exporters sending the device overseas.
Even though he declined to give out numbers, onstage Fadell gave the impression the Nest is going gangbusters.
He said the company is using the aggregated data from overseas customers to figure out its international rollout.
Afterwards, Nest spokeswoman Katie Brinks noted that Nest is Apple’s number 1 bestselling app accessory, and is being featured in more and more retail outlets, including 1,700 Lowes stores nationwide and 600 Best Buy stores.
But perhaps the biggest measure of success is Nest is being sued by the thermostat giant Honeywell for alleged patent infringement. The case is hold while the U.S. Patent Office examines the patents in question.
Indeed, the title of Fadell’s appearance was “Disrupting Dinosaurs With Design.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
