Nest Is Coming To Belgium, France, Ireland, Netherlands

Nest Labs is expanding its coverage to give more households in Europe the opportunity to give their homes some smarts and make them safer. Its products will soon be available in around 400 stores in Europe, particularly in Belgium, France, Italy and the Netherlands, with 150 more to come later this year.

Nest has been one of the more high-profile home automation thrusts the past year or so, especially after Google announced purchasing it. Its smart devices are officially available in three countries only, namely, Canada, the UK, and the US, and yet they report that those devices have been installed in more than 120 countries world wide. Considering the installation and setup requires some amount of know-how, it is definitely beneficial for Nest, commercially and legally, to make those officially available and supported in more countries.

Both the Nest Learning Thermostat and the Nest Protect Smoke and Carbon Monoxide detector will be available in those said countries. Nest Protect was recently upgraded to 2.0 software, which lets it better differentiate between innocent steam and harmful smoke. It has also gotten a few new features, like an activity log of the past 10 days, and better Heads Up functionality that will let you setup and train for emergency procedures.

Nest's expansion in Europe won't just be a matter of selling products. They have also hired local voice actors to provide translated voice alerts for each locale. Packaging and marketing are also adapted to each country's context. But perhaps best of all, Customer support will be available for each country and in their native tongues.

The Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Protect will be available later this month, with pricing to be announced later. Nest has also partnered with local energy companies like Direct Energie in France, Essent in the Netherlands, and Lampiris in Belgium to provide their customers with plans and assistance for getting Nest installed in homes.

SOURCE: Nest