SA Sees Blurring Lines for Telecoms, ISPs in Smart Home Market

Lines between segments in the smart home market are blurring, especially for telecom companies and ISPs, Strategy Analytics reported Thursday. Large consumer technology brands will push harder into the smart home market in 2019, with a stronger emphasis on services vs. hardware, SA said. The overall smart home market will need to evolve beyond device-centric roots by taking new roads into existing markets such as hardware-as-a-service sales models, it said. Intelligent home emergence “will take time” as it evolves, said analyst Jack Narcotta. Predictions for 2019: Facebook enters the smart home market through the Portal video calling device; Amazon partners with a major U.S. home insurer; Apple launches a lower cost HomePod; eldercare monitoring becomes an important smart home service; and service providers replace individual offerings by blending entertainment and smart home control packages.