Update (12/16/2015): Philips has changed his mind and the company will continue to support third party lights. Great news!

Every tech company nowadays likes to use certain words in their messages to users and media. One of their favourites terms is ‘Open’. Everything seems opens these days. Except it’s not.

We’ve got a recent testimony of that with Philips Hue, the technology that allows to control our house lightning from a smartphone and that was not only compatible with Philips Hue bulbs, but with other bulbs from third parties that did comply with the ZigBee standard that was used across those products.

It’s Philips who doesn’t comply now with those requirements and states that only certain products -not necessarily from Philips, but they’ll have to have a ‘certification’ from them- will be able to work under that ecosystem. Users are complaining about this change, of course.

There you go. You are open until you gain enough market share. Time to reap the rewards, Philips, isn’t it?

Source: Philips Hue cuts support for third-party bulbs – CNET