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Technology: 2014 is Shaping up as the (first) Year of the Connected Home
At this year’s 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January, manufacturers rolled out a slew of new devices targeting home automation and control.
Actually the market for connected home appliances isn’t new. It’s already estimated to bring in $10 billion in 2014 and is expected to grow to $44 billion by 2017, according to estimates from the group GSMA. This market includes products in the areas of security, access, lighting, entertainment, energy management systems, smart HVAC, and Ballast & Battery Packs.
Andrew Brooks, COO of SmartThings, said that “a lot of people spend time thinking about what the next connected devices will be. I think the next big shift will be what are the interfaces with which you interact with your smart home.”
There’s a huge future for these types of devices. Forrester estimates that currently only about 2 percent of US households use connected lights, climate control, or energy management systems. About 5 percent are using some sort of connected home security system. But 30 to 40 percent of households say that they are interested in these types of devices.
Frank E. Gillett, an analyst at Forrester, said that “I think we’re at the beginning of the industry hype cycle but not at the beginning of mainstream consumer adoption. Most consumers aren’t proactively saying, ‘I want X’… This is one of those things where it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, I can get that? Great.'”
Interestingly, many of the biggest innovators of connected home products are large companies, usually the kind of successful companies that worried new innovations could bring lost market share. Matt Turck of Techcrunch wrote that “the irony of this market, not always acknowledged, is that a number of large companies with big brands and existing ‘pipes’ in our homes, have been unusually innovative. From connected locks to mobile-controlled home automation platforms, large companies such as GE, Comcast or Philips have been offering connected home products for a while now, sometimes at the risk of cannibalizing their own analog products.”
