GoKawiilWith now more than 100 million cameras in the field, Amazon-owned Ring is ready to take advantage of its sizable footprint with the launch of a new app store that will expand its cameras’ capabilities. Focused initially on areas like elder care, workforce analytics, rental management, and more, the store will allow developers of all sizes to tap into Ring’s ecosystem to reach customers.
First announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the app store arrives alongside Ring’s expansion beyond smart doorbells and cameras for people’s homes to those aimed at businesses. But the new store is also enabled by the leaps being made in AI technology, which can take advantage of Ring’s ability to see and hear things in the real world and translate that for users in specific situations.
For instance, one launch partner, the SoftBank-backed company Density, has an app called Routines focused on elder care, which can leverage Ring cameras to help families keep an eye on their loved ones, like their aging parents, and be alerted to concerns like falls or changes in routines.
An app from QueueFlow can help businesses better understand what wait times and congestion are like at any place where people need to wait their turn, like events, restaurants, service desks, waiting rooms, and more.
An app from Minut can help Airbnb hosts monitor their accommodations, which is tied to its other camera-less sensors that track things like excessive noise and temperature.
The idea, explains Ring founder and CEO Jamie Siminoff, is to expand the capabilities of what Ring cameras can do beyond providing homeowners’ security.
“With AI, there’s just an incredible amount of long tail use cases,” he told TechCrunch. “We are unlocking value that our customers have invested in, in things that…all of us together never thought we could do.”
However, there will be areas that are restricted, given the growing consumer backlash against surveillance technology, which has also impacted Ring. After the company launched features that could find lost pets or watch for wildfires, customers became aware of how much these cameras could do — and how that could lead to a world where people couldn’t go anywhere without being tracked, recorded, and potentially even recognized by AI-powered camera systems.
Aware of the potential for similar bad PR with its app store, Siminoff notes that the terms will not permit apps that offer certain types of privacy-invasive features, like facial recognition tools or license plate readers.
“We’re trying to be careful to make sure that it is being used for…apps that deliver value to the customer,” he said of the Ring app store. “Certainly, we have to listen to what’s happening out in the market and the scrutiny.”
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