There are several things to say. There's better user experience when you use all "smart" product from one company/place, because company's product tied to company's app. By functionalities we mean turn on/off light bulb, power socket, teapot, some facts/actions in calendar, music station.
To start playing with that features it's enough to connect them via wifi, but when amount of devices increase they could work unstable. That's why there's routers with protocol called Zigbee. In this way devices could work better and even without connection to internet. For example, Yandex station do job of 2-3 things: acts as a router, plays sound, can listen for commands.
Actually it's part of business which is not profitable and mostly depends on investments for now.
There's also interesting facts related to production, electronics, design and production. You can listen more in Запуск завтра podcast episode.