The day has finally come for Nest to arrive in France (& Ireland, as of today), after the company announced their international plans earlier this month at IFA. Nest’s French-language website is online, and it looks like the Nest Protect & the Nest Thermostat will be available online (no news on Dropcam yet).
http://twitter.com/lionelpaillet/status/512504702018535424
At last glance, the Nest checkout system was down, pointing users to buy Nest in select retail stores, which include FNAC, Darty, Amazon, Lick & Castorama. That’s a pretty broad net of distribution, meaning Nest should have no problem getting in front of users, and, potentially, into their hands.
As we mentioned earlier this month, smart home devices are not new to France – local players like Netatmo & Qivivo will be looking to maintain their foothold in the country. In addition, it will be interesting to see how Nest, who has tried very hard to make Europeans forget it’s owned by Google, will be received by the French press. So far, it seems, there has not been an immediate Nest-Google association, which lines up well with Nest’s communication strategy.