Voice Control to Comprise 30% of Smart Home Spend by 2021, Says ABI

Voice control has a bright future, said an ABI Research report Thursday, citing marketing efforts, digital assistant adoption on smartphones and “genuine consumer value” as contributors. Voice-controlled smart home devices such as Amazon’s Echo will be 30 percent of smart home device spending by 2021, despite barely existing as a category two years ago, said ABI. “Voice control will not only draw in new consumers to smart home functionality, but it will help transform a wide variety of new and emerging smart home services and devices into more attractive investments,” said ABI analyst Jonathan Collins. Voice will become a key smart home interface in smart home managed systems, with Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung all having the capability to bring devices and functionality to market, he said. Voice control will assume a greater share of device revenue spending, but applications will drive its growth in the smart home and device categories, said the research firm. By 2021, more than 600 million smart home devices will ship annually, up from 40 million last year, it said. “The ability to integrate and extend voice control throughout the home environment will require many more smart home devices to work seamlessly with voice control offerings,” said Collins, appealing to home device and appliance vendors, installers and managed smart home systems providers to integrate with voice control platforms.