Which Betabounders are Investing in Home Automation, and Why?
It’s no secret the next boom in tech will likely come from the rise of the Internet of Things. As companies continue to make strides toward raising the IQ of their goods, American manufacturing is primed to produce a new wave of “smart” consumer products. The most immediate part of the ‘Internet of Things’ revolution comes in the form of home automation.
Up until now, there has been some initial success among first generation home automation devices. In 2014, the global home automation market was valued at roughly $4.41 billion. That said, high prices, complicated tech, and less than impressive user experiences of have left many in the marketplace waiting for more efficient next generation products.
While it is true that consumers have been transitioning slowly to home automation products, a recent report from HIS Technology makes a compelling argument that this is about to change.
Analysts predict that between now and 2018, we can expect to see over 45 million more smart home devices installed in homes around the world. Even more impressive, at its current projected pace, the global home automation market is set to surpass $21 billion by 2020.
The future looks very bright for the home automation industry. That said, it will be brightest for those companies who can most effectively solve some of the drawbacks currently associated with existing home automation products.
That’s why we surveyed 2,600 Betabounders, to find out more about who’s investing in automation products and why! Check out our infographic below for the results of our survey. Continue to follow this blog for more in-depth analysis and information on the future of home automation over the coming weeks.
Very interesting…
Basically what I thought it would be.
I am not surprised at the age range, nor the level of household income. The cons people described, specifically interoperability, is also not surprising.
I took what I was given in the test and have been expanding my list of connected devices in my home. My other half was sold on this system the first time she pulled in the driveway and saw the kitchen and living room lights come on automatically.
I’m a heavy user. Interoperability and reliability are the two primary issues I’ve experienced with IoT. For a very long time, I was on SmartThings and Wink, since I had Lutron devices which SmartThings wouldn’t support, but also had ZWave and Zigbee devices that weren’t recognized by Wink. I switched from Wink to Staples Connect due to the abysmal reliability of the Wink system, but though Staples Connect was more reliable (since it sent commands over the LAN, unlike the absurdly stupid decision to send them via the cloud on the other two systems mentioned), it also didn’t support most of my devices.
I eventually became so fed up that I rooted my wink hub and spent the next two weeks coding up a massive software project that got the hub talking to SmartThings. Although this finally allowed me to standardize on one platform, I’m still not at all impressed by the reliability or latency of my home automation system.
I’m also aware that the average user is going to simply abandon the idea of IoT long before reaching the point that I did. So I’ll still call this market premature.
Seeing as though Betabound has a lot of home automation products, I am wondering if this skews the results of the test at all? I know that it certainly persuades me to invest in one direction vs another if systems I am already testing are on one particular platform. I still haven’t decided between Smarthub, Wink and Vera (I have Wink hubs for lights and a Vera Controller and also an Amazon Echo)