Smart home

Since 2010, the smart home market has grown very rapidly. It is particularly clear that in 2010, only 0.5% of households in the United States connected home appliances such as thermostats, lighting, security and entertainment. But by 2017, this figure has risen to 12%, with an average of 6 smart home devices per household.

The success of smart homes is due to the service packages offered by professional security providers, which are focused on home security monitoring. However, due to the monthly professional security service fees, more and more consumers are beginning to prefer DIY to purchase smart home products. Although both approaches face opportunities and challenges, the future growth of smart homes will mainly depend on professional services and DIY models.

Smart Home Technology Partner

For example, Vivin and Best Buy, Vivin and Sprint. In most cases, Best Buy is a competitor to Vinint because consumers buy and install smart home items or systems themselves, or ask Geek Squad for help. In addition, Nest has partnered with MONI to introduce optional professional monitoring features for Nest Secure products.

Although this approach is not new, Scout Alarm, LiveWatch and SimpliSafe have taken a similar approach, but still emphasize the need to integrate multiple channels and methods into the smart home market. These are examples of mutual partners that contribute to the development of the entire smart home market.

In 2017, global smart home equipment shipments were approximately 120 million. Among them, retail channels accounted for 62% of sales, and are expected to rise to 70% by 2021. Although the demand for professional installations is growing, for individuals, most purchases are temporary. For example, when a consumer purchases a camera or a thermostat and adds it to an existing smart home system, he or she generally chooses to purchase the product through the retail channel.

In addition, multi-system operators (MSOs) and professional security provider channels account for half of the market in 2017. By 2021, multi-system operator channels will be twice as large as professional channels. The reason for this rapid change in just five years is the lack of professional service providers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia Pacific region. Therefore, multi-system operators will occupy these markets in major markets. However, professional security service providers in North America will still maintain a strong market share.

Smart home development trend

In the next 1 to 2 years, user interface, flexible services, network security and surrounding markets will become the main trends in the development of smart homes. The smart home user interface will continue to improve, and although voice control technology became the mainstream trend of user interaction control in 2017, it is not the only interaction and control method for smart homes. Most smart home devices still require smartphones and tablets for setup.

That is to say, although Amazon's Echo can control the WeMo smart socket, users still need to download the WeMo APP to set the corresponding function of the device. However, as long as the device is added to the same network as Echo, you don't need to use the app every day. At the same time, as smart homes become more isolated, displays are becoming more popular in the home.

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In the future smart home, most devices still need to be set up on mobile phones and tablets.

DIY ecosystems (such as Wink or SmartThings or Philips Hue lighting) are usually limited to one person using a mobile device. Therefore, other family members need to access the mobile device or need to be authorized by the primary user to access it on their own device (assuming no smart speaker control is used). This has led to a very poor user experience (voice assistant Google Home has added the ability to allow multi-user voice control, making the smart home more user-friendly). But the display can be controlled by everyone.

Smart home expenses

At present, the smart home market has formed a flexible service and pricing model. DIY Smart home systems like Scout Alarm do not require contractual restrictions. Even professional monitoring service providers have begun offering non-contracted prices and offer some network value-added services with low monthly subscription fees.

Since many smart home devices currently do not have a fixed monthly fee, the cost of maintaining mobile applications, platforms and support services must be supported by higher equipment prices. However, smart home businesses can offset some of the costs by purchasing different materials. According to the IHS Markit Teardowns team, the metal ring of the Nest 3rd Generation thermostat costs $10, which is more expensive than the $9 LCD. In contrast, the most expensive component of Ecobee3 is the LCD screen, which costs about $4.00. As a result, the Ecobee3's manufacturing costs have been reduced by nearly $20 compared to the Nest third-generation thermostat.

Smart home security

Ensuring smart home security will be a hot topic in the coming year. One effective way to change this is for manufacturers to ask consumers to change the default password. Manufacturers need to require consumers to change their passwords before using the product from the start. For example, home routers typically use 'admin' as the username and 'password' as the password, which most users have never adjusted.

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For aged care, door and window sensors and motion sensors can be used in conjunction with software to monitor their daily lives.

Today, the challenge for many consumer and smart home vendors is that many passwords are built directly into the firmware and cannot be changed by the consumer. As the threat of ransomware and other botnet attacks becomes more serious, smart home businesses need to take more security measures to ensure consumer safety.

Home care and insurance company

Although the smart home market compound annual growth rate (CAGR) will exceed 50% by 2021, the growth rate may be much higher due to support from related markets such as aged care, construction/developers and insurance companies.

For aged care, door and window sensors and motion sensors can be used in conjunction with software to monitor everyday life. If an elderly person suddenly changes his or her daily life, it will remind the nursing staff. These devices can also be used in professional aged care facilities to help care workers respond to patient needs in a timely manner.

Because insurance companies are everywhere, working with insurance companies is another way to get smart home devices into the customer; 2017 is the best time to work with insurance companies in North America. Moreover, insurance companies are very interested in the entire ecosystem.

Professional and DIY integration

While providing specialized equipment (smoke detectors and leak detection) reduces the risk of claims, insurers need to have full access to the data. Therefore, they are more interested in creating their own platforms from scratch or working with vendors to support data analysis. At the same time, close cooperation with builders will continue to gain momentum, especially in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. By working closely with builders, this can reduce the challenges associated with B2C channels, and the overall cost of the system can be masked by mortgage payments, resulting in more system installation and less distribution costs.