Why the Modern Smart Home Is No Longer a ‘Jetsons’ Fantasy

 


It is a well-known truism that nothing succeeds like success. This maxim certainly applies to the modern smart home, where a new category of connected devices has been rapidly growing in adoption since 2014.

This phenomenon has not been accidental. Parks Associates data indicates that 88 percent of U.S. households currently have broadband access. The pervasiveness of broadband access in the typical household has created a fertile ground for connected appliances, electronics, and other smart devices. Parks reports that 34 percent of broadband households own at least one connected device, with consumers owning an average of 13 connected devices (of any type) in their home, up from 9.2 in 2016 — a dramatic 41 percent increase in less than five years.


Supercharging the smart home has been a rising desire by consumers to address and solve problems in the home. While the technical landscape of the smart home has been evolving (and continues to), new and existing homes must be “reimagined” with connected devices in mind.

Parks Associates recently engaged with GE Appliances to develop a white paper that identifies the opportunities, headwinds, triggers, and dynamics in addressing the macro smart home opportunity. Many of the white paper’s chief findings and insights conjure up a whole host of topics that smart home companies should heed in their mission to address this growing but challenging technology category.

Smart home device demographics

Parks Associates’ research has identified convenience, comfort, and peace of mind as the central factors driving adoption. These primal factors have been abetted by traditional marketing attributes like increased brand/product awareness and co-marketing partnerships (particularly in legacy industries like energy providers, insurance companies, and energy providers). The smart home space, from its origin, has always had a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) guise, with the ensuing installation and setup consequences that early adopters and fast-follower consumers are willing to accept.

Nevertheless, the overall percentage of U.S. broadband households owning three or more smart home devices increased by more than 64 percent in the past two years, up from 14 percent in 2018 to 23 percent at the end of 2020.

It is hard to argue that COVID-19 has not played a central role in the scorching growth of video doorbells, as stay-at-home consumers (increasingly working from home) found unique appeal in the ability to monitor online deliveries and observe visitors to their homes, often in a remote manner. Parks data indicates that video doorbells experienced the highest growth level — up 86 percent over the past six years — of the most popular smart home devices. Contributing to the appeal of video doorbells, especially with the rise in crime in many urban and suburban areas around the United States, is the product’s ability to facilitate the overall safety of their neighborhoods by posting crime-solved videos of nefarious activity.

Read more About: connected appliances

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Capitalizing on the Wearable Turnover

Image
While   smartphones   have traditionally led the way when it comes to   connected devices , the rapid rise of   hearables   and wearables and their growing popularity amongst tech savvy consumers is widening the breadth of consumer connected devices. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), in 2021 the wearables market grew 20 percent year over year with total shipments reaching 533 million units.  With more hearable and wearable product options being introduced to the  market  at a variety of price points, retailers can offer customers more opportunities to  upgrade  to the next generation of smart watches, fitness trackers, earbuds, etc. It’s a great time to begin cultivating the secondary device ecosystem for these devices, using the thriving trade-in market for smartphones as the blueprint for capturing the latent value in pre-owned products while providing incentives for customers to upgrade to new devices.   Factors  Driving Market Growth    The growth in the hearab
Read more

1MORE EVO’s Hi-Fi Audio

Image
  If COVID-19 taught us anything, it’s our need to stay connected. Our workplace and lives shifted online, and technology adapted to our demands: Zoom took center stage;   computers   improved; we bought ring lights and headphones; we spent more time texting and on social media. We all learned how to stay connected to the world by connecting to our  technology . However, we shouldn’t have to sacrifice our connection to technology as we shift back to in-person activities and rekindle our human connections face-to-face. That’s where 1MORE EVO earbuds come into play. 1MORE EVO headphones deliver H-Fi sound with adaptive active noise cancellation (ANC), so users can stay connected to the world and comes equipped with six mics for those still working over   zoom .   How It Works:   As I unboxed the 1MORE EVO headphones, I was shocked at its ability to balance the aesthetic with the informational. Sketches of the headphones and its various features artistically coat the box’s interior but ev
Read more

How Retailers Can Capitalize on the Inflation Reduction Act

  In 2021,   EV   sales totaled   6.6 million or 8.6 percent  of all new car sales and that number is only expected to increase over the coming years after the   Inflation Reduction Act  was signed into law earlier this month. The new measure features funding for over 500,000 new EV chargers and provides a slew of incentives for customers and manufacturers alike. The target of the new legislature is to get more low-income consumers into electric vehicles to increase mass adoption of the cars and to buck the image of EVs as unobtainable luxury vehicles. California, one of the states on the forefront of pushing for EV adaptation has a program awarding low-income customers nearly $17,500 towards purchasing a used EV.  The Inflation Reduction Act is the first step in the Biden administration’s goal of reaching half of all new cars sold being electric by 2030. While EVs are becoming increasingly popular in states such as California and Massachusetts, progress is lacking across much of middl
Read more