Interoperability Challenges Smart Home Market as Adoption Grows, Says Parks

Smart home devices will increasingly rely on voice control, video and data analytics, sound recognition and artificial intelligence to simplify the user experience, blogged Parks Associates Wednesday. U.S. broadband households own more than 10 connected devices -- including consumer electronics, smart home and connected health products -- and as they buy more, they’re basing purchase decisions on a product’s ability to work with others they own, said Parks. But interoperability remains “a leading challenge," said analyst Chris O’Dell. Three-quarters of consumers who intend to buy a smart home device in the next year said the ability to work well with others is key to the purchase decision, but that's increasingly difficult when consumers buy stand-alone devices "at different times, from different brands, rather than purchasing smart home systems." Some 30 percent of computing and entertainment device owners report experiencing loss of wireless connectivity, naming routers as the most common source of the problems. Mesh networks and 5G could mitigate wireless issues, O'Dell said. Sixty-seven percent of consumers rated “alerts when someone enters your home” as the most appealing among a range of home security features; 75 percent of broadband households want tight control over personal data and 45 percent are “very concerned” about hackers gaining control of their connected devices. Smart home purchase intentions grew from 21 percent at the beginning of 2014 to 43 percent at the end of 2018.