LightwaveRF plc (LON:LWRF) shares rose as it said its smart home assistant has been certified to work with Apple Inc’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) home products.
Lightwave Link Plus, which connects to a standard Wifi router and integrated smart home systems to control lighting, heating, power and security, is compatible with Apple’s HomeKit range.
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Apple’s HomeKit items include lights and switches, wireless heating and cooling thermostats, alarms and room sensors. Users can control these products using an Apple Home or Lightwave app on an iPhone or through voice control.
Lightwave chief executive, Andrew Pearson, said the certification under Apple's licensing scheme for Link follows more than two years of research and development.
“A fully integrated Apple chip allows Lightwave Link Plus to work directly with Apple HomeKit without reliance on third party technologies and interfaces,” he explained.
“This new generation of smart home technology has much improved energy efficiency, uses a combination of radio frequencies and protocols to execute fully encrypted commands with zero latency, and is future proofed by remote over-the-air update capability.”
"Together with our new cloud platform capabilities, energy consumption analytics and voice control Lightwave Link Plus is a significant new development for the company.”
Pearson said Link Plus and its new range of lighting and power devices will launch later this year.
Shares in Lightwave increased 4.21% to 24.75p in morning trading.
Apple is also developing its own smart speaker to compete with Google Home and Amazon Echo.
The HomePod, a wireless speaker for the home that allows users to ask Apple’s voice assistant Siri to play music and ask questions, will retail for US$349 when it is released in December in the UK, the US and Australia.
Since voice control can be used with Link Plus, it may be compatible with HomePod.