FabianIt’s been nearly 14 years since Philips Hue first saw the light of day. The vast majority of the bulbs sold back then with the first starter kits are still working today. It’s an impressive success story, now summarized once again in a detailed video podcast from The Verge.
The video, which runs over an hour and features not only The Verge’s David Pierce and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy but also a smart home journalist and Hue inventor George Yianni, is available to watch in full for free on YouTube.
Among other things, the in-depth conversation covers the first prototypes, technical hurdles, and the initial presentation to the sales team at Apple Retail Stores. They had actually scheduled a meeting with Philips’ audio specialists, but ended up getting a look at the first Philips Hue smart bulbs as well. In the end, they were so impressed that the first Philips Hue starter kits were sold exclusively at the Apple Store for four months.
George Yianni came up with the idea for Philips Hue back in 2011. Prior to that, he had developed controller systems for large-scale lighting installations at Philips Lighting. “Back then, you could have lighting installations put in your home for a lot of money, but who wants to tear down walls and pay tens of thousands of euros for that? I wanted to find a way to make all that cool stuff accessible to everyone,” recalls the Hue inventor, thinking back to the early days of smart lighting. “It wasn’t that easy, because it took a very long time to get the technology into the small bulbs. Eventually, it became possible to integrate LED technology and the controller into the bulbs as we know them today. Plus, smartphone apps were becoming more and more popular, which helped us achieve our breakthrough. That’s how we were able to make the system as simple as possible for everyone and eventually launched Philips Hue on the market.”
