With 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.”
Following the backlash from customers, Ring canceled its partnership with Flock Safety, a maker of AI-powered cameras that share footage with law enforcement. The partnership would have allowed agencies using Flock to request footage from Ring doorbell and camera owners. Ring itself has a long history of sharing data with police, and has received criticism from privacy advocates in recent months for new partnerships with law enforcement and companies like Axon.
Ring’s app store future
Ring’s new app store will be discoverable within the Ring app for iOS and Android devices, and will initially be limited to customers in the U.S. before rolling out more broadly. However, adding apps to your Ring set-up won’t involve using the platform’s in-app purchase payment systems.
That means Ring won’t be paying Apple or Google commissions when customers decide to expand their Ring experience with a partner’s tools.
Siminoff says this is because Ring isn’t the one actually distributing the apps — users will still likely need to download the partner’s app from the app store to access the new functionality. Meanwhile, the Ring app itself isn’t changing to incorporate the partners’ new features.
Still, this represents an interesting way to build an app ecosystem that’s outside the phone’s app stores, while still benefiting from Ring’s distribution on iOS and Android.
“It’s not just that Ring is doing an app store. It’s that Ring has a lot of cameras out there, and so therefore it is a big enough surface area that if [developers] do write something, [they] can get a decent number of customers and have a hopefully successful business,” Siminoff said.
In terms of monetization, when Ring directs a customer to one of its partners, it will be taking a commission on those sales. For now, that’s a 10% fee, but Ring says it’s open to apps offering other business models beyond subscriptions, like one-time fees or even free, ad-supported apps, if that’s something customers actually want.
At launch, there are around 15 apps available, but many more are in the pipeline, the company said. Developers are able to submit their apps for consideration through Ring’s developer site.
Other apps available now include a bird-identification app, WhatsThatBird.AI; a risk and security detection app (for fires, smoke, falls, leaks, etc.) memories.ai; an app for businesses offering alerts and people counting, Lumeo; a lawn health monitoring, LawnWatch; loitering detection for businesses, ProxView; a traffic and line monitoring app, StoreTraffic; package delivery tracking from Package Protect; and Amazon’s own app, Cheer Chime, that chimes when a person tips at checkout.
“I would say that the goal by the end of the year is that there’s hundreds of apps in tens of verticals,” Siminoff said.