Who Will Win the Smart Lock Race, August or Lockitron? (opens in new tab)

Neither. http://www.kwikset.com/Kevo/ is the most likely winner, seeing as its backed by kwikset.

Also, it has a way more appealing (to me) look- No bulky device hanging on my door.

Interesting piece, and reinforces my belief that "branding is everything". That includes the company name, the design of the product (and overall design language) and the kind of marketing that you do.

One thing I disagree on is the name choice in the case of August. Customers face so much input and distractions that I wouldn't advise anyone to name their company in a mysterious way that will provoke any kind of curiosity in the customer. Most will just skip your product. This one time it works because of the guy behind the company and the coverage he's getting, but I wouldn't count on this branding working outside of the tech circle and the early adopters which constituted the 10k of orders. The design is very good though, while Lockitron's is the definition of lazy design (just copy an Apple design and be done).

I particularly liked the author's comparison between GoPro and Contour. I admire GoPro's branding. The name is perfect (it creates the association between buying the product and becoming a pro, which is brilliant), the marketing is perfect and even the product packaging and store display is perfect. This is executed on an Apple level. Very few companies are this good on their branding. It all comes together to a "feel good product".

Neither or both. The market is ripe for the taking by one or many smarter solutions than the status quo.

There are more than enough locks in the work that could benefit from a smart lock. And network effects are unlikely to matter since at the end of the day there will be multilock apps that can unlock any manufacturer's smartlock via API.

Why does it always need to be a battle? In fact, they possibly could do better by teaming up to develop the market instead of compete over it.

Seems a little premature right now. I don't think we're quite at the "explosion" level yet for this type of device, like when the iPod blew up in, what, 2001?

I think we're more at the Zen/CD-MP3 player level... feeling out what's possible with convenient technology before someone hits on something and adds a twist or a feature that makes it click not with tens of thousands of people but with hundreds of millions.

There are others. Boring old Kwikset is partners in one of them:

http://www.kwikset.com/Kevo/default.aspx

Apparently featured on Shark Tank. I would think having a well established retail sales channel is a nice advantage.