SANTA CLARA (PRNewswire)– The UK has become a main consumer market for smart home products in Europe. According to public data, 57% of households in the UK now have smart devices. With work-from-home becoming a new normal in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers have spent more time on home improvements and have a need for diversified smart devices to help them with work/life balance.

If, on this basis, smart devices can also offer various entertainment and interaction possibilities, consumers will be more willing to invest in smart homes. The potential demand of consumers will drive the growth of the smart home market. Data from Strategy Analytics shows that the UK smart home market is expected to reach US $5.8 billion by 2022.

In order to boost market share by offering smart home devices with enhanced features and ease of use, Buy It Direct LTD, the UK’s largest e-commerce platform of home appliances, entered into a partnership with Tuya Smart, global IoT development platform (NYSE: TUYA).

The cooperation starts with smart products. Tuya’s MCU SDK low-code development solution has communication and networking capabilities packaged together. Buy It Direct LTD only needs to integrate SDK into its own application code, and can quickly incorporate it in devices by calling related interfaces.

In order to make the development process simpler, Tuya also provides a SoC development-free solution, so that Buy It Direct LTD only needs to add the control module to the device control box, in order to develop products quickly and at a lower cost.

Based on these two solutions, Buy It Direct LTD has developed more than 30 types of smart devices such as smart air conditioners, air purifiers, bulbs, security cameras and power plugs. The app provided by Tuya helps Buy It Direct LTD utilize the integrated control of smart devices.

Tuya’s open cloud API interface gives Buy It Direct LTD access to Tuya’s vast ecosystem, making it possible to get interconnected with more than 310,000 ‘Powered by Tuya’ smart devices.

“The speed of smart business penetration depends on consumer experience. Based on this consensus, we have reached cooperation with Tuya to smart-enable our products, and join Tuya’s open IoT ecosystem to bring a more comfortable and convenient smart lifestyle to consumers,” said Mark Holbrook, Category Manager of Buy It Direct LTD.

The partnership between Tuya and Buy It Direct LTD marks a new development direction for the IoT industry: building an open ecosystem and becoming a contributor to it will be the key to obtaining IoT business opportunities.