They have proven they can't be trusted with this sort of power, and that is a one way trip. You don't come back from that, you don't get back off my list.
This decision was made by someone in marketing. Phillips engineers (in this division) were ambivalent because it meant less verification and testing (yea!) but also means they have a less capable product. It got approved because someone (likely a director somewhere) put together a market strategy that showed they could make x dollars in the next 2 years doing this.
Public backlash was bigger than expected. VP gets involved. Decision is changed.
However, I would say that a company (big or small) that actually changes their strategic marketing decision based on a user complaints _is_ rare. And this shows that Phillips has some good mechanisms in place to respond. To me, they come out a bit ahead at the end of this.
People in Marketing and Product tend to be way more in-tune with customers and don't make boneheaded decisions like this. Another easy tell: the company was shocked by the reaction of users. That meant the company wasn't aware of user impressions of the decision. That also meant Product/Marketing teams weren't involved in the decision.
When the "what does it cost us to test this compatibility" calculus comes out as more expensive than "what is the cost of the backlash to our company," you realize that Engineering divisions without enough resources are driving this type of decision, 99 times out of 100.
I disagree. Almost every shitty (customer-wise) decision I've seen a company doing was made by Marketing / Sales people. It's them who figure out that they can get more money by doing something repulsive.
This here seems to me like someone was calculating how much more they can earn by pushing manufacturers down the "Friends of Hue" line, but underestimated just how many people use non-FoH bulbs (or just how much nerds care about interoperability). Probably not someone from marketing, definitely not someone from engineering.
> When the "what does it cost us to test this compatibility" calculus comes out as more expensive than "what is the cost of the backlash to our company," you realize that Engineering divisions without enough resources are driving this type of decision, 99 times out of 100.
Why would they care? They're not testing compatibility with Chinese knockoffs anyway, that's why they use ZigBee, and that's why they have a "Friends of Hue" program.
I disagree. I don't see engineers coming up with or getting on-board with such a clearly anti-open-standards decision. Much more likely, what I think happened is that this decision was forced on engineering from above, morale hit all-time lows, there was much grumbling and consternation as they implemented this anti-feature that they clearly didn't believe in, then they rejoiced at the huge public outcry when the change was pushed, and are now celebrating that those assholes up in management had to reverse course with a heavy dose of "I told you so".
Source: I am an engineer at a big company and have seen this scenario play out many times internally.
There is zero reason for an engineer to have "anti-sentiment" to an open platform because it's moot. Most likely, an engineer would be completely indifferent to a decision like this.
They reversed the decision because of the user outcry, they noticed a lot of users would rather risk stuff not working than not get them outright. This is a major step and I like that a lot. Being able to change your course to what users want instead of what you think is the most profitable should be applauded.
/s
A ZigBee network seemed like the right idea.