According to Juniper Research home automation and monitoring devices will grow to 770 million globally by 2021-- representing 1000% growth over the 68m sold in 2016.
The analyst points out increasing adoption of platform evangelism and openness to partnership boosts 3rd party device development, especially in developed markets. In fact, W. Europe, N. America, Far East and China are forecast to account for almost 75% of households adopting the technology in 2021.
In addition, Juniper says home automation hardware devices will "rapidly" beat subscription services, with one-off purchases seeing faster growth over the next 5 years. Hardware sale revenues are to exceed subscription revenues in 2018, reaching $6.2 billion, and services such O2 Home in the UK are destined to remain a niche offering. This is due to the subscription business model not being a fit to an immature market.
In terms of vendors, new entrants and disruptors will intensify output from the developer community, using technologies such as machine learning to improve automation platform intelligence. This will not only increase smart device integration, but also generate case-specific applications, which until now have been lacking.
Successful players will be able to identify critical issues which can be alleviated through the introduction of smart home technology," Juniper concludes. "For example, countries that are faced with ageing populations, such as Japan, will benefit from increasing interplay between automation and digital health services.”
Go Smart Home Automation and Monitoring Devices to Exceed 770m by 2021