Mass-Market Consumers To Enter Smart Home Space via Unit, not System, Purchases, Juniper Says

Juniper Research is forecasting consumer spending of $43 billion for smart home devices this year, jumping to $100 billion by 2020. Entertainment services including Netflix and Spotify are enlarging the smart home market on “universal appeal” and low-cost service, Juniper said, but emerging segments including home automation will begin to catch up, driven by falling hardware prices and growing consumer awareness. To date, numerous home automation subscription services, such as AT&T's Digital Life, “have struggled to address the mass-market,” Juniper said. Unit product purchases, rather than systems, are the most likely entry point to the smart home for consumers, Juniper said. It cited Nest and SmartThings as companies that have “successfully added subscription services to their hardware sales in order to generate lifetime value.”