Amazon’s acquisition of Ring officially closed today. Now the companies (or company, rather) are marking the occasion by discounting the Ring Video Doorbell $30, down to $100 — because what better way to celebrate scalability and maximum distribution than a price drop?
Amazon is quick to note in its press material that the Ring name is sticking around — for the time being, at least. The company’s products will be joining a bunch of other smart home devices under the Amazon umbrella, including the company’s own Cloud Cam and various devices by one-time competitor, Blink.
Among other things, that means that existing customers shouldn’t expect service interruptions with the product. That said, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see the company pushing toward an Alexa-based smart home hub solution to rival offerings like Apple’s Home app. Certainly it would make sense for the company to try to put everything in the same place — and could ultimately make things a bit less fragmented for the consumer.
A recent interview with Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff also hints at what the company will ultimately look like in relation to Amazon’s Key service, which met with mixed reviews at launch.
“As it relates to Key, that’s obviously one that we’ll look at pretty closely,” he told CNET. “I wouldn’t want to make any commitments at this point in time, but it’s certainly one that’s on the list that we’ll start thinking about.”
Not super insightful, but about as much as one can expect from the head of a company recently purchased by Amazon. While Siminoff says Ring will stay relatively independent, maintaining its Santa Monica office, becoming a piece of Amazon’s smart home play likely means deeper and deeper integrations with the company’s home hardware offerings.
Amazon’s clearly been eying the company for a while. The company backed Ring through the Alexa Fund, which has become a bit of a funnel for future acquisitions of late, as it looks to leverage the Echo/Alexa’s success into an all-out smart home takeover.