“Hundreds of thousands” of Nest learning thermostats sold

Nest's Tony Fadell at GigaOM RoadMapStartup Nest only launched its learning thermostat last October but the company tells the New York Time’s Bits Blog that it has sold in the “mid-hundreds of thousands,” of units range. The company — which is the brainchild of Tony Fadell, who helped design the iPhone and iPod for Apple — immediately sold out of the thermostat shortly after launch, leading to long wait times for the product well into 2012.

But now, the company seems to have ramped up production, and at this point, the Nest thermostat is selling through a variety of places including Nest’s online site, the Apple store, big box retailers like Best Buys and Lowe’s and Amazon, among others. Fadell will be discussing what’s next for Nest at our annual RoadMap event, which will focus on design in the age of connectivity and will take place on November 5 in San Francisco (tickets went on sale today here).

Because the Nest device is connected and has smart algorithms, the company can push different software and services to it and see how Nest customers respond, points out the Bits writer. So called A/B testing is pretty common on the Internet, but not really widely used in the thermostat and utility worlds. Nest’s algorithms have also changed slightly as Nest has learned more about its customers.



GigaOM