Keyless Entry Strategy for iOS or Android

I recently installed a Tailwind iQ3 smart garage door opener. It is very impressive, pretty simple to install, and downright cheap at $60. Just the fact that it will alert you if the door is left open at night, and if desired, will automatically close the door, if probably worth the price.

It also eliminates the need for a keypad. In my experience, keypads are a hassle and a bit of security risk. Because the code is typically very hard to change, people don't change it often, or use the temporary code feature. 

You can open the door remotely, which comes in handy in various situations, such as your neighbor wants to borrow some tool in the garage when you are away on vacation. Even better, you can assign opening privileges to other Tailwind app users. Great for guests, or families with more than 2-3 garage users, who would otherwise need to obtain extra garage door modules for their car.

Which brings me to my main point. While the sharing privileges feature is great, it comes with the substantial friction of each guest user having to install and provision the Tailwind app. It would be SO much better if this were nearly frictionless--i.e., if it were built into the mobile OS.

(Note: I know that a garage-oriented view of home access is a very suburb-centric viewpoint. There is a clear analog with smart door locks, more on that in a moment.)

Apple or Google should acquire Tailwind, and partner with the lock industry, to build keyless entry access-sharing into the OS. 

Apple is probably the more obvious candidate, at least in the US. If this were an Apple-only feature (think iMessage), it provides a distinct source of competitive advantage and lock-in through network-effect. Given that households in the US that have garage doors, and can afford smart locks skews upper-income, this fits well with Apple's customer base. Moreover, Apple's good image regarding security in general should transfer well to this use case.

I think the immediate first step is acquiring Tailwind (who I believe is the market leader, certainly the functional leader), and making it Apple-only going forward. The smart garage door market is new enough that I think that a play for total dominance is realistic.

The door lock market is much more established and fragmented. It also has a heavy decorative dimension. So I am doubtful that a total domination play is viable. Instead, Apple could move quickly, and leverage domination of the smart garage market, to establish its standard, open for adoption by heterogenous door lock manufacturers.  

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NOTES

As a consumer, I would ideally prefer to see an industry standard. But from the perspective of business strategy, it seems like a great opportunity for Apple. Also, I am doubtful about the standards-based approach happening any time soon.

A consumers should never rely solely on anything electrical, let alone "smart", for critical access. I cringe when I talk to someone whose only access to their house if via the garage door opener. So always carry a housekey--that applies to smart locks as well. But for many use cases, you can tolerate the pretty low risk of an electrical outage. E.g., if you have a weekly housecleaner for 10 years, and there is a 25% probability that once over those 10 years, the power will be out, and they won't be able to get in--that doesn't seem like a crisis (unless of course Murphy's Law strikes, and it happens to be the day before you are planning a big house party!).

My Original Covid "Modeling"

I recently came across some back-of-the-envelope modeling I did early in the Covid ordeal (05/18/2020). Conclusion was that the duration of "Flatten the Curve" was a theoretical minimum of 214 days. I didn't even bother posting it at the time, because it seemed to depressing.

The core assumption underlying the model was that a large percentage of the population was going to get Covid, it was only a question of when (my working figure was 60%). Then the next key metric requiring an assumption was--what proportion of Covid patients would require hospitalization? My guess at the time was 10%. This turned out to be way too high (by a factor ~5X), although per this paper, I think that was a figure that was circulating at the time.

Anyway, from there it was just a matter of calculating how many "inventory turns" of hospital beds would be required to cycle the entire Covid population through, and how long an inventory turn required (on average). My guess for duration (5 days), turned out to be very low, so partially offsets the high guess for proportion of population infected.

Keep in mind that 214 days is the theoretical best. It assumes the rate of Covid sickness is perfectly optimized, never exceeding hospital capacity (which would imply excess deaths), but never leaving any slack (to ensure the shortest possible duration).

Optimization is always hard, but optimizing rate of acquisition of a novel disease is impossible. So the real-world outcome probably would have been both excess deaths, and still a duration of longer than 214 days. That is, if the 10% of Covid patients require hospitalization assumption had been accurate. Thankfully that was not the case.

0.0028	Hospital beds per capita
0.5	% devoted to Covid patients
0.0014	Steady-state hospital beds
0.60	proportion of population who gets Covid
0.10	proportion of sick requiring hospitalization
0.06	Proportion of population requiring hospitalization at some point
42.9	"Turns" of beds, to cover entire hospitalized population
5	Duration of hospitalization
214	Total days required to work through entire population, if curve flattening is perfectly optimal.