North America To Lead Smart Home Market That's Expected To Reach $34 Billion by 2020

North America will be 46 percent of the $34 billion global smart home market that’s projected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 21 percent from now until 2020, said ABI Research. Home security systems have led the market, but the smart home category is also seeing strong revenue growth from smart plugs and smoke and air quality monitors, said analyst Adarsh Krishnan. Regional differences are playing out in device adoption as security cameras with embedded motion sensors are popular in North America and Western Europe for home security and indoor activity tracking, said ABI. In China, meanwhile, increasing concern about air quality is driving interest in environmental sensors, it said, citing introductions of air quality monitors last year from Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and Xiaomi. Among wireless protocols, proprietary technologies from Bosch Security, Honeywell and United Technologies -- operating in 433 MHz and 900 MHz RF bands -- continue to dominate in low-cost battery-operated devices such as contact sensors and motion sensors due to higher quality of service and longer battery life, said analyst Jonathan Collins. Low-power mesh networking wireless technologies from Z-Wave and ZigBee have also seen a rise in adoption rates that’s expected to continue. Z-Wave is embedded in more than 1,000 interoperable devices, while the latest ZigBee 3.0 protocol will fuel growth addressing earlier ZigBee interoperability issues, said Collins.